TANWEN
The Cethorelle was a fine ship, but I don’t care how fine a ship is. When you’re trapped belowdecks for five days because of driving rain and epic wind, every ship feels like a coffin.
I could have died of relief when I answered a knock at my cabin’s door and found Wylie smiling and holding two cups of tea.
“Rain stopped. Want some tea?” He held out one cup to me and the other to Aeron, who stood beside me. “I know you don’t care for the stuff, En-Howell, but we’re out of bitter-bean.”
Aeron smiled. “I’ll take it. Thanks, Bo-Thordwyan.”
“Glad I’m not a soldier like you two,” I said as we all three made our way down the hall toward the stairs. “I still can’t make your last name come out of my mouth right. Glad I get to call you Wylie instead.”
“No offense, Tannie,” Wylie said as he stepped back and let me and Aeron climb the stairs first, “but I think all of Tir is glad you’re not a soldier.”
I stuck out my tongue as I passed him. “That’s right. Make your jokes. But who will you be calling when your sails go flat and you need some wind strands, hmm?”
“Tannie!”
“Exactly.” But then my mind caught up to my mouth, and I realized someone was calling my name above deck—and there was a note of panic in the voice. I cast a worried glance back at Wylie, then took the rest of the stairs two at a time.
I burst into the humid air. Wylie had said the rain had stopped, but it felt like we were in the middle of a thick cloud.
I scanned the deck and realized it was Zel who had called me, for he was still shouting my name. But the sound was nearly swallowed in chaos all around us. Crewmen ran everywhere, and some corner of my mind registered Wylie sprinting past me.
But I couldn’t make sense of what I was seeing. Warmil had his sword in his hands, and everyone was looking out at the sea, back the way we had come. I didn’t need to see what they were watching for the whole scene to suddenly make sense. I knew.
The wave of strands had found us again.
“Captain, can we make it to Kanac?” one of the men shouted at Mor.
“They’re coming too fast,” Mor shouted back. “Get the rowboats loosed. We may have to—”
The first stream of fire exploded onto the deck. Wood splintered. I screamed and covered my face with my arms as shards burst toward me.
“Tanwen!” Father’s voice, but I couldn’t find him. The deck was aflame.
“Father?”
I looked around, but I still didn’t see him. Instead, I saw a ribbon of inky night racing toward Warmil. I shot a beam of sunlight across the ship and intercepted it before it smacked Warmil in the face.
“Tannie!” Father again, but where was he?
Smoke curled all around me, some from the fire on the ship, some from strands that grabbed at me. I fought to collect my wits long enough to create some wind, but the smoke was everywhere. One strand snapped around my ankle and yanked me to the deck.
I screamed and kicked at it, but kicking smoke doesn’t do much. I lifted my hand and loosed a blast of cold air. The smoke puffed away. The tension around my ankle released long enough for me to scramble to my feet and run.
But . . . where?
Tendrils snaked all over the ship. Everywhere I looked, a new hole was being punched in the deck. A ribbon of hot metal wrapped around the railing on one side and yanked. The whole rail came free and splintered to bits.
Realization hit me like a slap. We were going down. The Cethorelle was going to sink.
Gryfelle. Karlith. They were still belowdecks.
I blasted a strand of fire away from me with the thought of ice water, then ran for the stairs—to the right, I thought, unless I was totally turned around. But before I reached the steps, I saw Dylun and Karlith loading Gryfelle into one of the rowboats. Dylun had the box with the cure fragments and all his maps and notes tucked under one arm. Always thinking, he was.
But a coil of smoke was about to wrap itself around Dylun’s neck from behind.
I ran toward them.
“Dylun!” I gave him half a breath of warning before sending a stream of wind toward him.
He gripped his papers just in time. The smoke puffed away as the papers fluttered, but he maintained his hold on them.
“Thank you,” he panted. “My colormastery—”
“Doesn’t work against this, I know. You take care of Gryfelle. I’ll cover you.”
He nodded, and I threw sunshine over his head to kill a ribbon of night.
“Who is doing this?” I yelled to no one in particular.
“Tannie!” Father emerged from the smoke. At last. “Are you hurt?”
“Get down!”
He didn’t hesitate. He dropped low, and I sent a beam of ice over him. The fire had been a moment away from hitting him in the back.
“Tannie, you need to get away.” Father stood quickly. “Captain’s orders: abandon ship.”
“But I have to fight the strands.” I turned around. “Where’s Mor?” I drove away a column of smoke with a puff of wind. “Where is Mor!”
“Tannie.” Father put his hand on my arm.
I spun back to meet his gaze. “What?” But then I saw it there in his eyes, and somehow he didn’t have to say anything else. I knew what he was going to tell me.
Captain goes down with the ship, fighting.
“No.” I wrenched my arm away.
“Tannie girl . . .”
“No!”
“He needs to see to the safety of his passengers and crew. He will stay behind until everyone is safe.”
“I have to find him. He needs my help.” I gestured to Karlith and Dylun. “Help them get Gryfelle to shore. Take everyone you can in the boat.”
“Tanwen!” Father’s voice was sharp. “You need to get in that boat right now.”
“I can swim,” I said frantically. “I have to help!”
A huge stream of fire blasted into the starboard side of the Cethorelle, and she listed sharply. I stumbled into Father, and somehow he held us both upright. The Cethorelle started taking on water, swallowing great gulps of it onto the deck.
I pointed toward the boat again. “Gryfelle and Karlith are helpless in there. Dylun’s trying to protect the cure. They need you right now. I don’t. Please help them. You know only Mor, Zel, and I can battle these strands and give anyone else a chance. Help them. Please, Daddy.” I hugged him quickly. “I love you.”
I slipped away into the smoke before he could stop me.
“Mor?” I called. “Wylie?”
I stumbled into someone and realized it was Warmil. “War! Where is everyone?”
“Some of the crew were bailing water by the quarterdeck, but Mor’s ordering everyone off.”
“Do we have enough boats?”
“I don’t think so. Maybe.”
I glanced toward the shore. Kanac was so close. Swimming distance, probably, if we could get away from the strands long enough.
“War, can you swim?”
“Aye.”
“Find anyone who can’t, and get them to the boat on the port side. My father is there.”
“I can’t find Aeron.”
Warmil would never leave without finding Aeron first. “She was with me and Wylie coming up the stairs.” I shot a sunbeam into a knot of night strands. “Let’s find them.”
We splashed through several inches of water and bumped into a few crewmen.
“Jule!” I cried. He stood on the quarterdeck by the wheel. A cord of inky night was wrapped around his throat, and the color had left his face.
I prayed he would close his eyes, then I blasted a strand of sunlight into his face.
I hoped I hadn’t ruined his eyesight forever, but the strand snapped away from his throat. Breath and color returned to him. In the next second, a strand of smoke wrapped around each of my wrists. Then two more around my ankles. I met Warmil’s gaze. Gasped as the strands jerked me up into the air, high above the deck of the sinking Cethorelle.
As I floated above the ship in their grip, a strange thought passed through my mind: They don’t want to kill me.
If they wanted to kill me, they would have gone for my throat or downed me with fire. Instead, smoke was lifting me up.
Why?
Who was it?
What did they want?
Before any of these questions found answers, all four strands of smoke were blasted away. I tumbled from the air, plummeting toward the watery deck. But before I smashed against the wood, a cushion of air caught me and set me on my feet. I looked up, and there was Mor, hands outstretched and eyes wild.
“Tannie, are you hurt?”
“I . . . I’m not sure.”
I felt about and found a few sore spots, but I didn’t care.
“Did the boat make it off?” The water was up to my knees now. We would have to climb toward the stern, now rising up in the air.
“Aye, I think so. I ordered the ship abandoned.”
“But you’ll stay?”
“Aye. Until everyone’s safe. I don’t run anymore.”
“Then I’ll stay too.”
I expected him to argue, but he grabbed my hand. “Come on.”
As we climbed for the stern, a sudden sadness overwhelmed me. I had come to love this dumb vessel with all its roasted fish and salty broth and green-faced seasickness. It had been home for three moons, and now it was sinking to the bottom of the Menfor Sea.
Wylie appeared through a cloud of smoke, clinging to the stern and holding on to a crewman being dragged overboard by a rope of night.
I gasped and thrust a ray of daylight toward them both. The night strand popped and disappeared, and the crewman smacked down onto the stern. But at least he was free. He dragged himself back on deck.
What was left of it, anyway.
I clambered toward Wylie, who looked just about spent. I wondered how long he had been keeping a hold on that crewman. I reached out my hand to help him back over the rail. He grimaced, and we grabbed wrists.
But then his eyes went wide, and his body jolted. Confusion clouded his face.
He had stopped climbing, and his grip around my wrist loosened.
I looked down and saw the strand of molten metal protruding from his chest.
“Wylie!” I cried out. “Wylie, no!”
He still looked confused. Puzzled. As though he wondered why his body had gone cold. Why his breath wouldn’t come. Why he was slipping from the stern of the ship into the sea.
His entire weight dragged him backward, and I couldn’t hold on. He slipped from my grip and tumbled into the ocean.
I screamed. And screamed again. I watched helplessly as Wylie sank below the surface, eyes frozen open. Blank. Unseeing.
I gripped the stern and tried to conjure something—an idea, a thought, a story—that might help. Sunshine to battle the night, or a rainbow of color to fight the gray panic overwhelming me. Anything.
But the only thing that came was another hollow scream.