A simple kiss shouldn’t have affected her so profoundly. After all, Sabrina had taken her pleasure from time to time and from port to port. But she’d never felt this, this...she didn’t even want to end that sentence with a noun.
I’ve never felt this mistake before, she thought now, turning to face the man who emerged from Intrepid’s hatch as easily as if he ran up and down steep stairs every day of his life. And in stark contrast to the flurry of emotions twisting her own gut, Nicholas’s face was expressionless, his greeting no more than cordial.
“You want to set up here rather than down below? Risk strangers tromping through your ship?”
Well, two could play at that game. “It’ll be easier to assess who’s worth training if we have the ropes and rigging at hand,” Sabrina answered, forcing herself to remember that she was captain first and woman a very distant second.
Or maybe thirteenth.
Clearing her throat, she turned away from the shifter who sent spirals of heat alternating with darts of cold streaming through her veins. “Zach, you’ve learned enough knots by now that you can run the applicants through some practice ties, right?”
And, without a thought to his all-important role as buffer, her brother nodded and strode away to set up his knotwork station. The disloyal rat.
Despite her brother’s dereliction of duty, though, Sabrina was saved from putting her foot in her mouth—or, let’s face it, from making a more physical mistake—when the metal door below burst open and a stream of men and women pushed out onto the open rooftop. There were dozens of applicants, far more than Sabrina had expected given the relatively low salary she was able to offer combined with her own newly revealed nature as a wind witch.
And to her surprise, they weren’t all strangers either. Instead, Sabrina picked out several members of her previous crew mixed in with the crowd.
Okay, so her cabin boy had very little likelihood of finding another position of equal quality, so it was in Tom’s best interests to return to the ship he’d so precipitously left behind. But she hadn’t expected to find her engineer leading the way up the ramp.
Meanwhile, a glint of red hair drew her eye to the engineer’s apprentice ten feet behind his supervisor. The young man was talking animatedly to Aerie residents about either batteries or ancient Greek poetry...or so she assumed since those were the only two topics of conversation that had ever brought color to his sallow cheeks in the past.
“What did you do?” Sabrina asked, curiosity swiveling her body back around to face her nemesis at long last. Up close, the heat of Nicholas’s inner fire pressed into her skin like direct sunlight, his scent redolent with the aromas of a smoky campfire burning aromatic cedar and pine.
Sabrina shook her head to clear it. She had more important things to do than to smell a dragon.
But the slow smile spreading across the shifter’s mouth promised that he was equally aware of her presence and was far less torn by his enjoyment of the occasion. “I did exactly what we discussed,” he said quietly, his voice a deep rumble that toyed with her shredded composure. “I put a notice up on the third-floor bulletin board to say that you were seeking employees. And I listed myself as your first mate.”
Chapter 11
Nicholas shouldn’t have been so intent upon Sabrina’s face, but he found himself intrigued by the way she managed to hide her emotions beneath a deadpan expression. Still...was that a pinch of pleasure about her lips? Did her eyes flash ever so subtly with approval...or was it warning?
The shifter wasn’t sure, but he planned to do his darnedest to find out. Perhaps that’s why he didn’t notice the approaching danger until it was almost too late.
At first, though, the morning appeared to be all fun and games. Sabrina had set up two tables on the otherwise empty deck, and sailor wannabes took turns trying their hand at each station. First, each attempted to replicate a long series of intricate knots under the silent yet patient tutelage of Sabrina’s teenage brother, then the captain herself questioned potential crew members about both past history and future aspirations.
Nicholas had planned to insinuate himself into the latter process, taking full advantage of his firsthand knowledge of Aerie inhabitants to speed the interviews along to their most effective conclusion. But Steph drifted up onto the deck while the captain was busy teasing out the unsuitability of the third applicant, and Nicholas’s attention immediately latched onto the newcomer then stuck.
Unlike Sabrina, Steph’s face was easy to read. An all-too-familiar crease lined his sister’s brow and her hands drifted from pockets to armpits due to anxiety rather than cold. Nicholas found himself half rising from his seat, in fact, as his sister peered out over the crowd with even more than her usual hesitancy.
A secret. Nicholas could see the signs from a mile away, and it was up to him to help that secret come to light.
He hadn’t quite made it out of his chair, though, when an iron fist closed around his upper arm. “Sit,” the captain ordered, previous girlish emotions absent now that she’d fallen back into her more familiar role as boss. Without releasing her hold, Sabrina jerked her chin, and a ne’er-do-well who’d never lifted a finger except under extreme duress trotted up with an extra chair dangling from one extended arm.
After a nod of thanks to the chair carrier, Sabrina called an invitation to the female shifter, who had drifted partway across the deck while Nicholas’s attention was otherwise occupied. Then, once it was too late to pull his sister aside and debrief her in solitude without making a scene, the shifter found his arm free and his side cooler as the captain shifted over onto the newly added seat.
Clever. He’d been outfoxed, and Nicholas couldn’t help grinning as Steph slipped into the spot Sabrina had so recently vacated. It was strangely fulfilling to pit his intellect against Sabrina’s, and to realize that his knack’s most gut-wrenching side effect had been ably countered by the high-handed curiosity of an independent-minded wind witch.
Because any secrets that now bubbled up onto his sister’s lips would enter Sabrina’s ears as well as his own. Which meant Nicholas wouldn’t be breaking Steph’s confidence by sharing the latter’s confessions...and at the same time he wouldn’t be stuck unable to act upon secrets that no one but he and the secret keeper possessed. The notion was completely unfamiliar and strangely satisfying all at the same time.
Sure enough, Steph was whispering in his ear as soon as her butt hit the seat. “I need to talk to you,” the female dragon began. “I...I can’t stay here. The ocean.... I mean, it’s hard to explain. But, I think the salt water is calling to me. And...”
Nicholas hummed encouragement while watching Sabrina multi-task with a vengeance. She was obviously listening to every word that spluttered out of the female shifter’s mouth, but the captain also worked her way through applicants with an efficiency that he would have been hard-pressed to surpass. First, Sabrina dismissed an entirely unsuitable slogger, then she waved a new applicant up to take the other’s place.
At which point old secrets abruptly vied with new.
***
The fourth interviewee’s face was plastered with her usual eager-to-please expression, the secret only she and Nicholas knew well hidden beneath a loose-fitting sweatshirt that ballooned out to confuse the shape of her rapidly expanding torso.
Charlotte. In all the drama of Steph’s arrival and Sabrina’s secret spilling, Nicholas hadn’t taken the time to check on the pregnant server over the course of the last day and a half. Now he regretted his lapse since that lack of attention had led directly to the young woman applying for a place on a dangerous airship.
Well, Nicholas had told Charlotte to find another job. He just hadn’t expected her to seek out duties more harrowing and dangerous than those at her previous post.
“No.” The word came out far harsher than he’d intended, and Steph shrank back as if she’d been slapped.
“No?” she parroted, her voice barely audible. Which, predictably, made Ni
cholas feel like an ass for terrifying a shifter who was already so traumatized she couldn’t accept a hug from a kind-hearted elderly woman like his mother.
“I’m sorry,” Nicholas said forcing his words to soften and his lips to curl into a placating smile. He waited until the fear on his sister’s face faded back into whatever passed for relaxation in Steph’s troubled world before he continued. “I didn’t mean to yell at you. Of course I’ll take you wherever you need to go. But let’s table that issue for a moment.”
Nicholas paused, then gritted his teeth in frustration as he realized that Sabrina and Charlotte and half the applicants on the ship were staring at him now. Lowering his voice, he focused his attention on the airship captain as he explained his initial outburst. “Charlotte isn’t an appropriate applicant,” he said simply.
Unfortunately, Sabrina wasn’t willing to take the hint. Instead, her metaphorical hackles rose immediately at the implied usurpation of her command. “Why not?” she countered, her voice syrupy sweet for Steph’s benefit but pitched loudly enough to reach the far edges of the ship. Meanwhile, long ebony braids rustled in a breeze that didn’t seem to affect anyone else on deck, clear proof that Sabrina was pissed.
“She...” The answer lodged in Nicholas’s throat, Charlotte’s secret refusing to emerge. Changing tacks, he turned to address the younger woman herself. “You know this isn’t a good idea.”
All three females leaned forward with interest. “Charlotte isn’t capable of doing the job of chief culinary officer, is that what you’re saying?” Sabrina prodded.
Chief culinary officer. Nicholas’s lips twitched upward despite himself. He’d interviewed Sabrina’s former crew members the night before and knew bloody well that their captain had referred to the hard-headed lout who’d previously held the position as “cookie,” or “cook” if she was in a particularly formal mood. There had never been a “chief culinary officer” aboard the Intrepid until Sabrina got her dander up.
“Charlotte would do a phenomenal job,” Nicholas ground out at last, unwilling to impugn his childhood friend’s good name even for the sake of protecting her physical health. After all, Charlotte was an excellent baker. She would likely take the culinary arts to a whole new level aboard the Intrepid, assuming she didn’t die a fiery death at the hands of an enemy dragon first, that is.
Of course, Nicholas could no more tell Sabrina that her new cook was pregnant than he could tell Charlotte that she was signing on to a tactical nightmare. Instead, he tilted his head to one side...and was the first to notice a swarm of mechanical pigeons winging their way toward him out of the blue.
Chapter 12
“Danger incoming!” Sabrina’s self-proclaimed first mate shouted, sending men and women alike scurrying for cover.
And for a seemingly endless moment, the captain thought Nicholas had overreacted. After all, satellite systems had long since fallen into disrepair while new earth-based phone lines were inevitably ripped apart by the Green. As a result, long-distance communications often came on the wings of wind-magic-fueled mechanicals...like the pigeons currently arrowing out of the clear blue sky directly toward the Aerie.
But robotic pigeons traveled alone, not in flocks of twenty. And the bulges beneath these fliers’ bellies didn’t match up with the streamlined shape Sabrina was used to seeing on robotic birds. So after only a brief hesitation, she accepted Nicholas’s assessment as fact and prepared herself—and her ship—for defensive action.
“Zach, lead everyone into the hold,” she called across the melee, catching her brother’s eye and noting his head nod in return. Then, trusting her sibling to protect the innocent, she opened her mouth and called up the wind.
The captain half expected her throat to be hoarse and her magic weak after the previous day’s massive expenditure of energy. After all, she’d always kept her powers hidden in the past...which meant her magical muscles had been stretched gingerly and at widely spaced intervals that did little to test their true mettle.
But animated air surged to life instantly, almost as if the currents had been waiting for her call. Rather than forcing wind through her larynx, in fact, Sabrina almost thought the melody was being pulled from her lips through no effort of her own.
Currents twisted together and lifted the captain off her deck in enthusiastic welcome. Breezes titillated and played. Then glowing particles of air darted out into the surrounding space like gnat-hunting swallows, splitting apart and streaking toward the robotic pigeons that were rapidly closing on her ship’s hydrogen balloon.
Out of the corner of one eye, Sabrina noted that the deck was quickly clearing of human life, that Nicholas had pulled Steph aside in preparation for some defensive action he hadn’t bothered to voice aloud. But the majority of her attention remained firmly focused on the dozens of magical winds chasing flying robots through the air.
Sabrina’s rational brain told her that it should have been difficult to manage so many breezes at once. But as she breathed from her belly and sang joyously at the top of her lungs, the zephyrs instead became an extension of her fingers and toes. Easy to manage, easy to guide.
Easy to clench into a fist ripping the lead pigeon out of the air by one taut canvas wing.
The mechanical bird plummeted in silence toward the flat roof of the Plaza, its similarity to a living, breathing creature disappearing as gears stuck and minuscule motor failed. Child’s play, Sabrina thought...and then the pigeon struck solid ground and exploded into a gushing cascade of riotous fire.
***
Initial flames fizzled out quickly, but the stream of incoming pigeons appeared to be never-ending. Bird after bird darted into the air around her ship, and sweat beaded on Sabrina’s brow as she called up additional breezes to tail each invader. Despite her best efforts to the contrary, a pigeon was bound to slip through her net eventually...and once again the captain was commanding an ultra-flammable airship full of innocents who had no idea how to handle themselves in battle.
She itched to bellow curt commands, to move interviewees off her ship and take the Intrepid into the open air. But her vocal cords were busy speeding up breezes, casting zephyrs further afield to pull pigeons off course before they could reach the habitable zone of the Aerie...or the hydrogen of her own balloon.
Luckily, Nicholas wasn’t a lowly seaman in need of a captain’s firm hand. The shifter remained steady even in the face of potential catastrophe, striding past her so quickly he might as well have been flying. Then, pressing buttons on the control panel until he found the proper sequence to contact the hold, he spat out the order that pained Sabrina just as much the second time around as it had the first—”Evacuate the ship.”
Without waiting for confirmation that his command would be obeyed, wings sprang out of Nicholas’s shoulder blades. And for a moment, the shifter seemed torn, trying to decide whether to protect the defenseless Steph or to stand by Sabrina’s side in battle.
Raising one eyebrow sardonically, the captain maintained her wind-driving tune but morphed the words involved to get her point across. “Go,” she sang. “I’ve got this.”
In her experience, most men would have argued the point. But Nicholas merely nodded once. Then, clasping the female shifter to his chest, he dropped out of view off the far side of the ship.
Sabrina hadn’t been lying—she did have the pigeons under control. Or almost under control. Still, she was relieved to hear the thunder of retreating footsteps as applicants scurried beneath her then streamed from ramp to Plaza door.
Relieved but also disappointed. There goes my crew, she thought wryly. Because what landlubber would dream of returning to apply for a job when stark reality was literally dive bombing his potential employer’s ship?
But before Sabrina could assess how thoroughly she was screwed, a thinner stream of boot steps headed up the ladders and stairs rather than down. They came out onto the deck in a defensive cluster, fewer sailors than a normal airship would require for operation...but perha
ps enough to man a wind witch’s conveyance since Sabrina could do the work of half a dozen airmen when the Intrepid was aloft.
Don’t make rash decisions, the captain admonished herself. But it was hard not to let pride rise in her chest as her little brother led the charge back onto deck just as ably as he’d spearheaded the recent retreat. Zach acted in silence, but he was the first to leap into the rigging, scrambling upward like a monkey before unfurling a fire-retardant sheet along the balloon’s length.
In his wake, a handful of men followed...along with the female cook Nicholas had been so adamant that they not hire. A pigeon took advantage of her lapse of attention to swoop past Sabrina’s defenses, and Charlotte was the one who took the robotic beast out of the air, clapping it between two stainless steel skillets where the explosion of flame quickly winked out for lack of oxygen.
Meanwhile, the hum of electric motors from below suggested that Sabrina’s engineer had settled back into his old post, preparing the ship for evasive action. All they lacked now was cannons and the Intrepid would once again be fully operational.
But Sabrina didn’t waste time taking in the heart-warming sight of a self-sufficient crew. Because the pigeons, although fewer in number, had begun evading her breezes with a skill they ought not to possess.
Perhaps they were fueled by a wind witch able to imbue inanimate objects with more intellect than came from her own simple homing spells. Or maybe some sort of artificial intelligence was allowing the robots to learn from their enemy and change tactics when one strategy failed.
Wait a minute.... Were the mechanicals truly evading her attacks, or were they simply arrowing toward a different target than the one she’d initially assumed was their intended destination?
Sure enough, a closer look turned up what should have been obvious from the very start. The robotic pigeons weren’t simply bombarding the Plaza willy-nilly, nor were they aiming toward Sabrina’s ship.
Cerulean Magic: A Dragon Mage Novel Page 7
