Red Tide (68 page)

As his body disappeared beneath the waves, Galantas was staggered by a gust of wind from the blast. It tangled in the
Fury
's sails, and the vessel slewed round. Splinters rained down on deck. Galantas closed his eyes. All about him the air screeched and whistled, but all he could think about was how Cayda had managed to unleash such destruction.
Air-magic.
He'd worked that out all by himself. But wasn't the woman meant to be a water-mage? True, the most powerful sorcerers could manipulate not only their own element but also the element over which it was dominant. Their control over that second element, though, was supposed to be shaky at best. Yet Cayda had demonstrated an equal command over water and air—a command few mages could match over even their primary element.

When Galantas opened his eyes again, the broken remains of the stone-skin galleon were sinking. Within heartbeats, only the bowsprit showed above the surface. Then that too vanished from sight. The wind dropped to a sigh. Corpses bobbed on the drunken waves. A mist of blood hung over them.

Movement from the corner of Galantas's eye, and he looked across.

The other stone-skin ship was still heading toward them. After Cayda's show of force, Galantas had wondered if the Augerans would remember important business elsewhere. Instead they came on more swiftly.

Barnick began to raise a wave beneath the
Fury
.

Galantas put a hand on his arm. “No,” he said.

“What?”

Instead of responding, Galantas looked at Amerel. The stone-skin ship was now just fifty lengths away. Was it too close for Cayda to repeat her fireworks without also taking down the
Fury
? And if so, did she have the strength to unleash another blast? Perhaps Cayda was contemplating the same, for she stared at the enemy vessel with an uncertain expression.

Then she met his gaze.

And shook her head.

Galantas's mind worked furiously. A moment ago, he had despaired at his plight, but now he saw an opportunity in it. He'd had enough of running. It was time to make a stand, and that meant accepting the challenge the stone-skins' advance represented. A part of him knew this was madness. Forty Rubyholters against hundreds of stone-skins? More importantly, forty pirates against hundreds of battle-hardened warriors? It didn't matter that the enemy couldn't bring all of those hundreds to bear at once, because force of numbers was sure to tell eventually. This wasn't a fight the Islanders could win.

At that instant, though, Galantas didn't care. It was the devilship's influence, he knew. The demon bound to its frame was poisoning his thoughts, so much so that when an Augeran arrow thudded into the binnacle, Galantas felt the
Fury's
rage as a rush of blood to his face. His crew would feel it too. If they could use that rage against the stone-skins, that would even the odds somewhat. Plus if Galantas took a battle here, might his kinsmen on the other ships be shamed into joining him? He looked south at the
Willow Reed
. At the rate Tub was approaching, he should arrive in time to play some part in the conflict.

But the Needle had only nine warriors with him. Why should he court death now when he'd worked so hard to stay out of trouble at the Rent?

Galantas pushed his doubts aside. Sometimes the odds were stacked so high against you that you
had
to run them. And if he could find a way to win, his name would become legend in the Isles. If he couldn't, well, he wouldn't be around to worry about it.

“No,” he said again to Barnick. “We fight.”

The mage considered, then shrugged. Of all those aboard the
Fury
, Barnick had least to fear from a battle, because if the Rubyholters lost, he could simply jump overboard and swim to safety.

The wave beneath the
Fury
receded.

The stone-skin two-master drew closer.

Some of Galantas's crew shouted to him to find out what was happening, but he did not answer. Let them assume Barnick had been prevented from carrying them clear by the stone-skin mage on the approaching ship. In any case, the rising bloodlust inspired by the devilship would soon take his kinsmen past caring.

Galantas retreated to the break of the aft deck.

With the stone-skin ship riding high on its wave of water-magic, all he could see of the enemy was the first line of warriors at the starboard rail. They carried shields that sparkled in the sunlight. More arrows whipped toward the
Fury,
and a choked scream sounded from on high. When Galantas looked up, he saw a crewman with a shaft through his throat tumble from the crosstrees, only for his leg to catch in the rigging. He hung suspended above the main deck. When a drop of his blood fell to the boards, the devilship's response was like a shot of oscura in Galantas's veins.

Someone started singing the Scourge. Within moments the rest of the crew took it up, their eyes fever-bright. Galantas wanted to join in, but a captain had to remain apart. One man dipped his fingers in the dead archer's blood on the deck and smeared it across his cheeks. Others banged the hilts of their weapons against the boards. Some idiot of a Squall decided to show defiance by standing up and twirling his sword over his head. An arrow through his eye shut him up. As he collapsed to the deck, Galantas felt another jolt in his blood.

The quartermaster crouched behind the ship's wheel. “Drefel,” Galantas said, “we need a reserve. Pick five men and bring them here.”

Drefel nodded and scuttled away.

Qinta took his place at the main deck's rail, and beside him was Noon. The Storm Islander was plainly fighting to keep his emotions in check, for his eyes were closed, and he was taking deep breaths. Cayda, by contrast, stood relaxed beside the mainmast. She seemed in no hurry to take part in the fighting, but her turn would come.

Galantas remembered then the alien sorcery unleashed against the
Lively,
Allott's talk of the ship's rigging coming to life. He glanced at the lines overhead.

Nothing.

“Here they come!” Qinta shouted.

The wave beneath the stone-skin ship receded. The dregs of it slapped into the
Fury
's hull, throwing up a shower of spray that drenched the men squatting behind the rail. Galantas's bladder felt fit to burst. A dozen grapnels arced out from the Augeran ship. Most were caught by the crouching Rubyholters and tossed back, but a handful bit on the
Fury
's rail. Someone with an ax rose to chop at a line, only for Qinta to haul him back down.

“Wait till she's made secure!” the Second bellowed.

The ships came together with a thud.

Twenty black-cloaked stone-skins boiled over the gunwale.

The
Fury
's crew rose to meet them, shrieking as they wielded their swords and boarding pikes. Qinta raised his pike to intercept a female Augeran. A full armspan of the shaft punched through her chest and out of her back, and the Second drove the point into the stomach of another enemy to leave two stone-skins impaled on the same weapon. To his left, a Rubyholter had climbed to the rail and now jumped across to the Augeran ship as if he meant to take it single-handed. He succeeded in carving his sword through an opponent's neck before he was hacked down by a trio of stone-skins.

Galantas sensed Drefel at his shoulder, straining to join the fray.

“Wait,” he said.

*   *   *

Sitting up in her bed, Romany watched her quarters transform. There was blood on the walls—spots, splatters, and smears—so old its color had faded from crimson to brown. There was blood on the floor too, sprinkled across tiles newly lined with cracks and edged with grime. There was even blood on the metal bars that had materialized over her window, mixing with darker patches of rust. Outside, the sky was a sharp blue, but inside the light had turned leaden as if the Alcazar were passing into dusk. Romany wrinkled her nose. The air smelled charred. And it wasn't wood burning, either.

She stood up and crossed to the door. Beneath her sandals, the floor felt sticky. From all about came a scuttling and a scratching as if rats moved behind the walls. Then Romany heard the reverberating footsteps of something huge lumbering along the corridor outside. Her spells of deception remained intact in the passage, meaning the owner of those steps probably didn't even notice her door as it approached. Yet still she held her breath. Must be the executioner, to set the floor trembling like that.

Romany wasn't minded to peek outside to check.

The footsteps receded.

Safe for now at least.

She looked about her. For all her shock at what had happened, she still found herself admiring the perverse artistry in Hex's creation. Okay, so the color scheme wasn't one she would have chosen, but there was no denying the man's sense of theater, or the skill with which he'd fashioned his conception. She reached out with her mind toward the wall. Hex's magic was like a skin spread over the stone. Spread thinly, too, but that was hardly surprising if it encompassed the entire Southern Wing. When she tried to pierce it with her sharpened awareness, her sorcery passed through as easily as a needle through mexin. Around the puncture, the blood and grime retreated to reveal a white circle of stone.

Interesting.

Romany's heart started to beat more easily. True, she'd made only a small hole in the Augeran's construction, but there was no reason to think that a large hole would prove more challenging. Escaping this otherworld should be a straightforward matter. If there were bars over the windows, there would probably be gates blocking the exits as well, yet all Romany had to do was find one and punch a hole in it. And while she'd have to pass through the corridors to get there, she'd have what remained of her web to warn her of trouble ahead—plus the skills she'd inherited as an assassin, if it came to a confrontation.

With her way out assured, she turned her mind to other considerations.

The noise of fighting came through her window from the floor below. Sorcerous concussions landed on her web like raindrops on a spider's weave, making the whole thing shudder. But still she was able to detect a concentration of Hex's power below and to her right—a concentration that surely signified the man's conscious will was being exercised. Worth investigating further?

Absolutely
.

Returning to her bed, she lay down and let her spirit drift free of her body.

She floated through the door and into the corridor. It was darker here than it had been in her quarters, and beneath the blood and gore on the walls were veins that pulsed with a liquid sound. Romany grimaced. The charms of Hex's otherworld were already wearing thin, but in her spiritual form, those charms were no more dangerous to her than if the stone-skin had conjured up images of moonblossom and honeyheather.
Moonblossom.
She tried to hold that picture in her mind.

She drifted through the floor to the lower level. Explosions came from her left followed by blooms of fire. Fortunately her destination lay to her right, and she hastened in that direction. She could see barely twenty paces in front, which meant she heard before she saw the monstrosity approaching from the other direction: a naked man with a shuffling gait, whose fingers had been replaced with metal claws. Worse still, his head had been twisted round the wrong way and now lolled forward. Or should that be backward?

Romany sped past.

The concentration of Hex's power came from around the next corner, and the priestess knew then what her destination would be.
The room where Mazana met the emperor yesterday.
The room where they had agreed to meet again today. When she glided inside, she found the chamber bore no resemblance to the one she remembered. The desk was covered with so much blood it might have had a body dismembered on it, while the walls looked like leprous skin covered in lesions and blotches and cuts sewn together, the stitches still in place. Those cuts throbbed as if something moved behind them. The air was sprinkled with flies.

A portcullis had fallen across the door barring access to two Gray Cloaks in the corridor. Near the desk stood Mazana Creed alongside Kiapa, Jodren, and the executioner. There was no sign of the emperor or his retinue. Kiapa was stony-faced as he took in his surroundings, Jodren looked like he'd bitten into something rotten, while even the executioner wore a frown, as if he'd taken a wrong turn and was trying to work out where he'd ended up. Mazana's face was pale, yet her gaze was unwavering as she stared at a red-cloaked figure in front of her.

Hex.

Romany floated closer.

The Augeran looked as solid as the other people here, but the priestess sensed she was seeing merely a copy of the man, a sorcerous construct. His cloaked swirled about his legs as he performed an extravagant turn. He was talking to Mazana.

“… trust you will find your new accommodation to your liking.”

When the emira responded, her voice was mild—too mild, it seemed to Romany, considering her predicament. “I assume it's too late for me to take up that offer you made?”

“To deliver the emperor's head, you mean? I think you'll find we never needed your help on that score.” Hex's next twirl took him closer to the gated door, and the Gray Cloaks beyond it retreated. “Forgive me if I leave you here, but you'll appreciate my priority must be the Erin Elalese. Never fear, though, I will be back for you sooner than you please. Hee hee!”

“You think you can hold me here?”

“Why not? We're a little far from the sea for you to call on your power.”

Mazana smiled. “My power, yes.” Then she shifted her gaze to the crimson-smeared desk as if noticing it for the first time. She rested a hand on it. “My, my,” she said, looking back at the Augeran, “what do we have here?
Blood?
”

And suddenly Romany understood the reason for the woman's lack of concern.
Spider's blessing, the blood!
And so much of it, too! The priestess swallowed. What had Hex done?