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I didn’t know who was more surprised, me, or the guy I’d just flattened. We both cursed up a storm, and I rolled off him onto the floor, no longer locked in the brig.
The brig itself was still locked. The keys were still securely attached to the man’s belt.
I had...transported out of the cell.
And there was no sign of Jack anywhere to blame it on.
That meant...
I swallowed.
Looked like I’d have to examine that mental box about my potential parents after all.
“How the bloody hell—” the man started, glancing between me and the bars.
Laughing, I bolted for the hall. The brig was located on the second lowest level of the ship with most of the cargo. Jack could be on any one of these levels, or all the way up on deck.
How was I going to find him and get us out of here without getting killed?
A hand wrapped around my arm and dragged me back. I spun with the movement and slammed my fist into his face. He grunted.
I swore loudly and shook out my hand.
“Nice try, kid,” he said. Hefting me over his shoulder, he brought me back to the brig and fumbled with his keys.
“Come on, you don’t want to be down here, either,” I tried. “I won’t tell if you won’t.”
The cell door squeaked open, and he tried to throw me in. I grabbed hold of his coat, and he stumbled in after me. His elbow knocked against my cheek, and we stumbled to the floor. Still swearing, he wrapped his hand around my arm.
I pulled out my wrench and whacked him in the face. It went much better than using my fist had. It also elicited a much louder swear. It did not, however, get him to release my arm. So, I hit him again.
"Son of a-"
I cut him off with another whack. "Let go!"
He caught the next hit and twisted the wrench out of my hands.
I let him take it and then reached down to bite the hand he had on my arm. He finally let go, and I ducked his attempt to hit me with the wrench and scrambled to my feet and out of the cell.
"Get back here!" he shouted.
I slammed the door behind me, but he was too close and caught it before it shut.
By the time he stepped around the door to chase me, I was already disappearing into the rest of the ship. "You little brat, get back here!"
Being chased by someone cursing my name was a familiar feeling. Unfortunately for me, he knew the ship better than I did. I ran down a row of cargo and around a corner, only to find him waiting for me at the other end.
And unfortunately for him, I was smaller, quicker, and more creative. I jumped onto a crate, ducking low because of the ceiling, and then threw myself off feet first right on his head. We crashed to the floor in a pile of limbs again, and I rolled head over heels, popping back up and bursting out into the main hall again.
A man in a dark blue uniform almost shot my head off.
Jack screamed "No!" and latched onto his arm.
I blinked. Where had they come from?
The man chasing me stumbled out after me.
I turned, another swear on my lips, and then a gunshot deafened me.
The man behind me fell over sideways, a red hole in his temple.
Jaw on the floor, I looked at the man with Jack. Jack was still hanging off his arm, but the man had adjusted the angle of his wrist the make the shot.
Jack sighed and let his arm go. “Ace, this is Officer Havoc. Havoc, this is my brother, Ace.”
The denial automatically rose in my throat, but...I couldn’t deny it anymore. Not when I’d used magic myself, with Jack somewhere else entirely and unaware of what was happening.
Instead, I nodded. “Thanks for the help.”
Jack brightened considerably, grinning like Sel.
Havoc reloaded his pistol, dumping the empty shells all over the floor. “Thank me when I get the two of you off this ship. Let’s go.”
If Jack trusted him, that was good enough for me. There wasn’t time to second-guess everything. We both followed him without a word through the ship and up the stairs. Twice, he threw out a hand to stop us while he checked a blind corner, but most of the fighting seemed to be on the deck.
We paused at the bottom of the last staircase, gunshots and steel on steel ringing above us.
“Okay,” Havoc said. “Our goal is to grab a line and get to the Tachsif. Most people should be distracted with their own fights, but we can’t assume that means we’ll be in the clear. I want you two to stay low and run as fast as you can to the rail.”
It was a simple plan, but it still felt like there was too much that could go wrong.
“Ready?” Havoc asked.
Jack and I nodded.
Then the plan went wrong before it could even start. Someone from Ryan’s crew stopped in front of the doorway and glanced down, giving us a double take. If it were me and Havoc, he probably wouldn’t have cared.
But his eyes landed on Jack, the critical piece in their plan to attack the palace. “The prince is over here!” he yelled.
Havoc swore and fired up at him, but he only hit the man’s shoulder. It wasn’t enough to stop him or the two men who came running at his call. He fired again, hitting one of them in the leg, but then they started to fire back. We had to retreat down the hall and find cover.
“Now what?” I asked. We couldn’t even get on deck to make a break for it to his ship.
“We can try and force our way through, but I don’t like our chances,” Havoc said.
“What about the other entrances to the deck?” Jack asked. “They pulled crates through the grates near the bow.”
“They latch from the deck,” Havoc explained. “And boosting you two up there would be too noticeable.”
Jack and I could attempt to transport ourselves to his ship, but I wasn’t confident about aiming that spell with other people, and when I went to suggest it to Jack, I noticed the chain for his watch was gone. It looked like that option wasn’t on the table, either.
Well, if we couldn’t fight our way through and we were trapped below deck, what else could we do?
Memories from our last trip aboard Ryan’s ship came back to me.
There was a lot we could do down here, actually, especially with Havoc watching our backs.
“We’ll sabotage the ship,” I said. “They trapped us down here, but we can get to the engine room.”
Jack nodded. “Yeah, that’ll distract them long enough for us and Captain Wilde’s men to get off while they try and save the ship.”
“And how do you expect us to get off?” Havoc asked. “You’ll send everyone running right to us.”
“Uh...disguises?” Jack shrugged. “We can steal some clothes from the crew and make it look like we’re one of them.”
“We’ve done this before,” I said. “We got off just fine then, we can do it again.”
Granted, last time we had Jack’s magic. But he’d managed to save us before when his watch had been depleted, so I was putting my faith in his ability to repeat that trick.
Footsteps ran down the stairs.
Havoc leaned around the doorway to shoot whoever came down. His aim was incredible, and both men that risked coming down landed in a pile at the base of the stairs. They did not move again.
I breathed in through my nose and forced myself not to look at them for long. My nightmares didn’t need any extra fuel.
“Alright, we’ll try it your way,” Havoc said. He jerked his head back, keeping his gaze trained on the stairs. “Go.”
This time I led the way through the ship. I’d lost my wrench, but Havoc and Jack had left a trail of bodies on their way to come get me, and all of them had their own pistols now going to waste. Without thinking too hard about it, I nabbed one.
“You know how to shoot that thing?” Havoc asked.
“I’m not aiming at people, I’m using it on the pipes,” I said.
“Oh, good idea,” Jack said. “That’ll be much harder for them to fix.”
I nodded and checked another corner. We didn’t run into anyone until we found the engine room guarded by four of Ryan’s men.
Havoc jumped in front of us, firing off four shots one after the other. The first crewman fell, but the rest had time to move out of the way. The worst they got were bullets in the arms.
When the crewmen raised their guns to return fire, Havoc elbowed us back around a doorway for cover. He would lean out to aim, but now that he’d lost the element of surprise, it wasn’t going as well as his previous victories.
“We need to do something,” Jack muttered.
“I’m open to suggestions,” Havoc said. He didn’t look back at us, too focused on the fire fight.
Ultimately, we needed to get past the guards to reach the engines. There would still be mechanics to get around, but with three of us, we stood a pretty good chance.
It was just getting past these guards that was the problem. Jack’s magic would have been helpful; we could have levitated their guns or something to give Havoc an opening.
All I knew how to do was transport, and claiming I knew what I was doing was being generous.
It wasn’t the first time I’d been forced to make do with next to nothing. The trick was figuring out the best way to use it.
I tugged on Jack’s sleeve. “We can transport behind them.”
He shook his head. “Ryan has my watch.”
“I’ll do it,” I said.
He blinked. “What?”
“I did it earlier,” I went on.
He cocked his head. “But you don’t have a watch, where will you draw the magic from?”
I shrugged. “From wherever I did before, I guess.” Now wasn’t the time to get into the specifics of how magic worked.
He frowned and considered it.
Havoc leaned back and reloaded his pistol again. “You boys got a plan?”
“Not much of one,” I admitted. “But I think I can give you an opening.”
“We don’t know it will work,” Jack added.
A bullet scraped the doorframe next to Havoc.
Grimacing, he snapped the bullet chamber shut with a snap. “Something is better than nothing.”
I took a deep breath. “Try not to shoot us.”
He snapped his gaze towards us. “Wait, what are you doing?”
Grabbing Jack’s arm, I summoned that weightless feeling, imagining us right behind the men in the hallway.
I didn’t expect the spell to work, and finding myself in midair was a shock. That was nothing compared to everyone else’s surprise, though.
It wasn’t a long drop, so Jack and I landed on our feet. I sprang forward and tackled one of the men immediately. Havoc used the distraction to shoot the second one in the neck, and Jack flashed a knife that made the third stumble back. Havoc finished the remaining two off.
My stomach turned unpleasantly. I would definitely be having new nightmares after this.
Havoc helped me back to my feet and pushed us onwards. “I’m not going to ask questions right now, but I have questions.”
Jack winced. “That’s fair.”
I wasn’t worried about whatever we chose to tell Havoc later. The priority at the moment was still to bring the ship down.
We were right outside the main engine room, and pipes lined the ceiling leading into it. Jack and I started damaging them while Havoc scouted ahead for the mechanics.
I used my stolen gun to shoot the pipes, sending jets of steam hissing into the air. Jack turned knobs until the pipes creaked and groaned. Once we’d done all we could, we followed Havoc into the engine room. Boilers and heavy machinery drowned out the sound of anything else. That made it terrifying to find a mechanic Havoc had already shot since we never heard the gunfire.
It also meant that we startled each other when we found one another again. Havoc nearly shot us, and we tripped over our own feet jumping back.
“Sorry,” Havoc said, helping us both back up. He had to yell to be heard. “I took care of all the mechanics.”
Then all we had to do now was break things.