Three children and a physicker were the only Imperials left standing on the main deck of the HMS Caliban. Slender Evie trembled like a leaf. Little stared into the distance with an empty look in his eyes. Holloway towered above us—a giant in a white, bloodied surgeon’s uniform. As the Coalition ship approached, the physicker wiped tears from his face with one bloodied hand. The gesture left scarlet smears across his green skin.
He left his firearm where it was on the blood-soaked deck. There was no point, really, in remaining armed.
“Let’s go below deck,” Holloway said gently to the three of us.
“Are they going to kill us?” Evie asked. His eyes were bright with tears, and his voice quavered with fear.
“No,” Holloway said. “No, I—I’ll take care of you.” His voice shook on the words, though, and we all knew that he wasn’t certain of them. He forced a smile all the same and leaned down to pick up Little with one well-muscled arm. Holloway offered his hand to me—but I recoiled at the blood there. He blinked down at his skin, as though just noticing the stains, and wiped his palm against his sleeve. “Grab on to my coattails, Mr Blair,” he offered instead. “Come along, double time. Close your eyes.”
Holloway guided us through the ship, helping us over the bodies we chose to ignore. When we next opened our eyes, we found ourselves in his quarters, just next to the sickbay. The cosy room smelled of sawdust and peppermint. Inside, sheltered from all of the horrible sights above deck, I could almost convince myself that everything that had come before was just a terrible dream.
The physicker settled the three of us onto his bunk and tossed a blanket over us. As we huddled beneath it, Holloway excused himself to wash his hands. During his brief absence, the sound of the Coalition ship docking echoed through our vessel. Our ship changed course as the Coalition ship began to drag us away.
Holloway hurried back into the room and closed the door. He hesitated next to it—but I couldn’t tell just what was going through his mind as he did. Evie’s crying intensified, though, and Holloway’s unbandaged eye flickered towards a little book on his desk. His hesitation passed.
The physicker took two steps across the room, snatched up the book, and thumbed through it. When he’d found the spot he wanted, he lowered himself carefully in front of Evie.
“You can read, aye?” Holloway asked. Evie nodded, hiccuping through his tears. “You know what helps me through rough storms? This page, right here—under the Benefactor’s section. Can you read it for me? I’m having a bit of trouble.” He tapped the broken glasses perched upon his misshapen nose and pointed to his bandaged eye beneath them.
Evie took the book. The pages were bent in corners, and the writing was terribly small. Nonetheless, he wiped his eyes and recited from it resolutely, interrupted only by the occasional hiccup.
“Noble Gallant has given you honour, and the Lady of Fools has made you courageous,” Evie choked. “Death Victorious has offered you glory. But I give you that which is most precious to me, that you may offer it to others in turn; for mercy may be given a hundred times, and never is it any lessened in the giving. Though honour breaks and courage fails and glory is forgotten: Know that you shall always have my love.”
Distant voices trickled down through the hallway outside. For just a moment, we all stopped breathing, Holloway included. Little clutched at Evie’s arm.
“Keep reading,” Holloway told Evie. “And whatever you do, stay put. All three of you.”
The tall, dignified hobgoblin walked towards the door. He stood there for a long moment—and then, with a steadying breath, he stepped out into the hallway. At the time, I wondered why he hadn't bothered locking the door. Many years later, the answer occurred to me: If the Coalition wanted us dead, there would be no stopping them.
I strained my ears to listen as Holloway’s ponderous steps took him down the hall. He called out to someone further away. Voices answered loudly, followed by the rush of booted feet.
I couldn’t stand the uncertainty. I shimmied off the bed and cracked open the door to peer down the hallway. I saw them: three men in mismatched uniforms and yellow Coalition kerchiefs, their swords and pistols drawn. Two of them, large and burly men, had grappled Holloway to his knees and slammed his face against the bulkhead.
“I’m a physicker!” he gasped. “Please! We surrender!”
“A physicker?” one rebel spat sceptically.
“What a lying coward,” another one laughed.
“This is for Pelaeia, you Imperial scum,” the last one said. His voice was cold enough to chill my bones. He lifted his pistol.
“No!” I screamed. I burst out from behind the door. The man with the pistol spun around and pointed the weapon at my face.
Holloway screamed—but one of the men pinning the physicker saw me, and he moved even faster. He relinquished his hold on the sawbones and lunged for the other man’s hand. The two of them struggled briefly, before the hand with the pistol twisted with an unnatural crack, and the shot went wide.
The man with the pistol shrieked and dropped the firearm. He clutched at his hand, and I saw that his trigger finger was now badly broken.
“Fer goodness’ sake, Cauldwell,” the other man shouted, “it’s a child!” He was an enormous, red-headed man with a neatly kept beard—the very model of a northern man. His beaten leather aviator’s coat marked him as a Coalition pilot.
Holloway stumbled my way, hurrying over to wrap his arms protectively around me. “Please!” he begged. “There are two others in the room. For pity’s sake, spare them—even if you can't find it in your hearts to spare me.” I had never heard such sharp fear in the hobgoblin’s voice. The Coalition man who’d tried to kill me frightened me… but seeing my idol brought so low scared me even more.
Cauldwell looked back up at me. In his eyes, I saw a deep and wild hatred. It was a curiously aimless hatred, though. It was directed at me; at Holloway; even at the Coalition pilot that had broken his finger.
I had been hated before, as a goblin on the streets of Morgause. Before I’d ever worn a uniform, I’d been shoved aside, beaten, and spit upon. The people of Morgause had seen me as a gutter-gob nuisance; theirs was a hatred born of disdain.
But this? This was a new sort of hatred I had never seen before. It mystified me, even as it terrified me; there was an element of the unknown to it that I didn’t yet understand.
“Children, Cauldwell!” the pilot roared. “Bloody children! What’s wrong with ye!” He shoved Cauldwell sharply towards the last rebel, who caught the man by the shoulders.
Cauldwell pressed harder against the wrist above his broken finger, as though he could somehow staunch the pain. His face was pale and sweating. “Those aren’t children,” he hissed. “They’re wee Imperial monsters. Look at they proud uniforms they’re wearin’. Bet ye they cheered wae the rest when they heard ’bout Pelaeia.”
The Coalition pilot reached down to pick up the pistol on the floor, holding it warily at his side. “None ae us is in our right heads, lad,” he said softly. “But that decision’s not yers or mine. Fer now, mark me—hurt ‘em, an’ ye’ll never have children of yer own.”
The hatred in Cauldwell’s eyes flared with a strangely painful frustration. His rage overflowed into helpless tears. I stared, dumbstruck by the sight. I had never seen a man cry in hatred before.
The pilot turned his attention back towards Holloway. “Physicker, eh?” he observed. “We’re lucky we stumbled ‘cross ye. Cauldwell here broke his finger. He’ll be needin’ someone tae patch him up.”
“Ah’d rather cut off ma hand,” Cauldwell rasped.
“Suit yerself,” the pilot sighed. He shook his head wearily. “Ye’re prisoners, physicker. You an’ the wee ones. Long as ye come quiet an’ do no harm, ye’ll get a fair hearin’—we’ve got a halcyon of the Benefactor with us, an’ she’ll chew our ears off otherwise.”
Holloway nodded silently. He tried to speak again—but all he managed was a few trembling sobs.
The pilot watched Holloway uncomfortably. As he did, I saw in his features a flash of the same aimless hatred that had moved Cauldwell. That hatred was tempered with other things, however; and as the pilot lowered his gaze to me, he forced some softness into his face.
“Thank you,” I whispered. I had to work the words past a knot in my throat.
“What’s yer name, lad?” the pilot asked me.
“I’m… William Blair, sir,” I choked out.
“William,” the pilot repeated slowly. “Well, William… I’m Lieutenant Dougal MacLeod.” He let out a breath, and I saw the last embers of that curious hatred die—replaced, now, by the expression of a man looking down at a scared child. “Stop worryin’ yer head fer now. Ah’ve got yer six.”
* * *
The Rose was probably the only ship with a crew foolish enough to travel through the Ironspine Pass in the dead of night. To be fair, I had an ace up my sleeve which made the endeavour slightly less perilous than it seemed: My navigator really was an otherworldly talent.
I mean that literally. My navigator was a faerie—one of the strange servants of the Tuath Dé who had created our world.
Faeries were a rare sight within Avalon; the Avalon Imperium had counted a handful of faeries among its allies, but I’d never seen a single one during my time in the Imperial Navy. In theory, I’d fought once or twice alongside the Envoy—the Tuath Dé’s handpicked messenger and advisor to the royal house—in battles where the crown prince had been present. But the Envoy had perished alongside the prince before I ever laid eyes on them. As such, Syrene was the first faerie I had ever met face-to-face.
I still wasn’t certain whether I was exceptionally lucky or exceptionally unlucky to have stumbled across Strahl and Syrene. I’d met them both in Lyonesse several years prior, during a disastrous scuffle with the local Wardens. Somehow, I’d escaped the situation with a bosun and a navigator, and with my broken Imperial Oath miraculously forgiven. To this day, I harboured uncomfortable suspicions that both Strahl and Syrene had once been very important to the Avalon Imperium… but Strahl had assured me that he held no love for the old empire, and his actions so far had supported that claim.
As for Syrene… well. She was frankly terrifying. But she owed me a debt, and faeries take that sort of thing very seriously indeed.
I stifled a yawn as the morning light crept over the lip of the great walls of the canyon, forcing myself to keep my grip on the wheel as I did. I risked a glance at the tall creature at my side.
“Almost through,” I mumbled. “Thank you, Syrene. Your skill humbles us all, as always.”
“We are most pleased to offer our wisdom, Captain,” the faerie beside me intoned. Her voice echoed like wind chimes in the air, strange and melodic.
Syrene was rail thin, with long, delicate limbs like boughs of polished oak. Her waist couldn't have been thicker than one of my thighs, yet she stood taller than most mortals—which meant that she positively towered over me. The flowers atop her head changed with the seasons and with our location—and sometimes, simply at her whims. Today, sophisticated braids of real, woven lavender trailed behind her, fluttering in the wind.
Syrene regarded the world with two pairs of spider-like, jet-black eyes. No lips, no nose—her face resembled a carved doll. I sometimes wondered how she managed to speak without a mouth, but I never dwelled too long on the matter. Mortal minds were not meant to fathom faerie magics.
“And what does the wind tell you today, Syrene?” I asked.
The faerie’s unblinking eyes alighted upon me. Her mirth emanated from her like the fires of a warm hearth. As always, her emotions were contagious. “The skies greet us as kin, Captain,” Syrene answered. “They warn us of harsher winds ahead, but no storms threaten us from here to New Havenshire.” She canted her head to the side in an absent-minded pose. “The Old One is restless in his slumber… but he has not noticed us.”
“Excellent,” I sighed. The reassurance sent a relieved shiver through my body as I steered us around the next bend. The manoeuvre afforded me a stunning view of the Ironspine mountain’s slopes, where a canyon wall dipped sharply.
Slate-grey, rocky slopes stabbed the sky with snow-capped peaks. Streaks of rusty-red iron spattered along the mountains, oxidised by prolonged exposure to the winds and rain. A day might come when Ironspine’s bones were picked clean—but it would be a long time coming, if so. The mountain still lived… and it did not take kindly to scavengers.
Nor did the mountain take kindly to guests—a thought which had kept most of us wary as we floated through the pass.
We still had a decent stretch ahead of us, but I was flagging at the helm. I became aware of Syrene’s willingness to help in the same way that I often knew when she was cheerful, contemplative, or displeased. I traded places with her, allowing her the wheel.
Not too far from the helm was the longhorn—a brass contraption of levers, knobs, and dials, with an ear and a mouthpiece set in the centre. I used it to call down to the engine room. It was early yet, but I knew that my chief engineer would be awake; Mr Finch was an early riser.
"Engineering," answered a posh, lightly nasal baritone. I could all but hear his raised eyebrow.
"Ah, Mr Finch!” I said, with more cheer than I felt. “How are the repairs to the engine holding?"
"Perfectly, Captain,” Finch replied. “Though I would like to make some final adjustments at New Havenshire if time permits. Our departure was a bit… hasty." My engineer’s tone held a prideful tinge, but it was well merited. The last time my venerable vessel had been fully up to snuff had probably been the day it first went skyward. Mr Finch had taken advantage of our time in Shackleton to strike the last items from his sacred checklist—a meticulous record of necessary repairs which he had started on the day that he first came aboard, so many years ago.
“I’m just taking out my cup for a spot of tea before I return to my duties,” Finch added. “Will that be all, Captain?”
“Yes, Mr Finch,” I assured him. “That will be all.” I paused, contemplating my next line of conversational attack. “Have I told you of late how much I respect your genius—”
The other end of the longhorn clicked shut. The droning tone of the empty line filled my ear. I sighed, hanging up the device. Curses.
“Mr Finch has not yet forgiven you for breaking his tea set,” Syrene observed. Her pent-up laughter danced inside of me as though it were my own.
“I’ll win him back yet,” I grumbled. “He’s about to settle down with some tea as we speak. The new tea set cost me a small fortune. He’ll have my apology right under his nose, every day around teatime.”
“One must pay an expensive price to court human genius,” Syrene observed laughingly.
The morning crew had started filtering out onto the deck as we spoke. I paused to confer with Little, confirming our heading and conveying Syrene’s observations on the weather. I promised to get some rest before the hour was up—though inwardly, I found the idea dubious.
Rest. Ha. I’d be a bundle of nerves, sitting awake in my bed until we were through the pass.
The longhorn bleated, and I answered. Dougal’s boisterous cheer crackled through.
“Mornin’, sunshine!” my outflyer chuckled. “Nobody had tae scrape ye off the deck today?”
I grinned despite myself. “No indeed,” I rejoined. “No idiots blaring the alarm.”
Dougal ooh’d and laughed uproariously. “Get some rest soon, lad,” he advised. “Ye been up all night. The others’ll have it under control.”
“Did you sleep well last night, flying past a grumpy mountain?” I muttered. I said it quietly enough that only he could hear it.
“Hah!” Dougal answered blithely. “Ah slept like a log.”
I sighed. Northerners.
“Get that rear into gear, MacLeod,” I told him. “You’re cleared for flight.”
“Roger that, Cap’n,” Dougal replied. “Firin’ ‘er up.”
I stayed on the line, listening to Dougal run through his pre-flight checklist. His outflyer’s engine coughed and sputtered to life.
“Chimaera One, ready tae cause a little trouble!” he declared.
“Please don’t,” I begged.
The northerner laughed. “Who do ye take me for?” he asked.
“Dougal MacLeod,” I answered with a grumble.
Dougal’s laughter redoubled. The Rose’s clamps released the outflyer, and he revved the small ship’s engine just enough to drop into our wake. I turned to look directly at him in his cockpit, fishing out my pocket watch. I dangled it in front of me and pointed emphatically at the time.
“I want you reporting on the hour and every half hour after that,” I ordered. “Understood?”
“Roger that, Iron Rose,” Dougal said. “Ah’ve got yer six.” The plane saluted me with a little wobble of its wings before it angled upwards, out of the canyon.
I headed into my cabin and tried to manage a few winks.
* * *
The Lady of Fools had smiled on our midnight voyage, but She must have turned her attention away from us that morning. Maybe She’d gone to sleep around the same time I did.
Five minutes after the first mark, Little sent someone inside to shake me awake. Dougal had yet to report in.
I headed directly for the quarterdeck, searching the rocky valley and the skies above for any sign of that old Coalition outflyer—but I saw no signs of it anywhere. I moved for the longhorn with a frown, snatching it up and double-checking the outbound frequency.
“MacLeod, you bloody twit!” I called into it. “Where are you?”
Static was my only response. I tried a few more times, adjusting the settings minutely in between each shout.
Long minutes went by. I was nearly ready to give up when the longhorn finally crackled. Distant, garbled words mumbled through the static—but they were utterly unintelligible. At least, I thought, it sounded like Dougal. His tone sounded distinctly urgent.
A deep rumble came over the longhorn. An instant later, I heard it in the distance behind us. I looked skyward; the skies were clear and blue, with lazy wisps of white cloud. Not a single storm cloud in sight.
I glanced towards our navigator, still standing at the wheel. Her wooden face remained serene. The winds had suggested no storms on the horizon, and that didn’t seem to have changed. A deep dread clenched at my stomach. That meant there were only two possibilities behind that sound… and neither of them was pleasant.
I deeply hoped we were under attack. I rarely have occasion to feel that way—but we were more likely to survive an attack than we were to survive an angry mountain.
"All hands on alert!" I called out.
Little caught my order and followed it up with a sharp whistle of his own. He started out onto the deck, smacking heads and urging people on with his hands. High alert! he signed. You heard the captain!
I changed frequencies on the longhorn, calling down to my gunnery chief.
“Brighton here,” Lenore answered, almost immediately. “What’s the fuss up there?”
“Trouble,” I said. “Not sure what kind just yet. If you’re lucky, maybe you and the ladies will have a chance to shoot something today.” I took a deep breath, forcing my tired mind to work quickly. “I want your best people armed and on the main deck, sharpish. And for the love of the Benefactor, no one takes a shot with the bloody cannons—if we hit the mountain, we won’t need to worry about the rest of our troubles ever again.”
Lenore laughed a bit too gleefully at that. I heard her step away from the longhorn to start barking orders to her fellow gunners. I closed the longhorn and hurried to help prepare the ship for battle.
A few minutes later, however, the longhorn made its telltale clattering ring. In my current mood, I likened it to the sound of a bleating sheep trapped in a piano. I rushed to pick up the receiver.
“Oi, Cap’n!” Dougal’s voice filtered over. “MacLeod ‘ere! Listen, we—”
“Damn it all, MacLeod!” I interjected. “Tell me you didn’t give Ironspine a MacLeod Wake-Up Call!”
“Ah did not!” the northerner replied cheerfully. “The rotters on ma arse did that when they fired oan me!”
The Lady of Fools, I decided, was awake and in a fickle mood. “Of course,” I groaned. “Two troubles at once. Why choose?”
Dougal laughed. The maniac.
I reached over to the longhorn and pulled the headset onto my ears. The warbling static on the line slowly cleared, and I knew that Dougal had started coming back into range.
Syrene glided smoothly aside as I took back the wheel; her long wooden legs melded with the deck as though it were made of water. Dougal’s laboured breathing sounded in my ears as I gripped the familiar brass spokes of the helm. I noticed a strained quality in the noises that came through the longhorn, now that I could hear them better. The outflyer’s aether engine was whining a bit too loudly. I thought I heard something hissing—maybe escaped steam.
“Status report,” I ordered Dougal.
“Wing’s damaged,” Dougal hissed between manoeuvres. “Ah’ve got it. Dinnae worry ‘bout me. Ye’ve yerselves tae worry about more. S’a right nasty ship headed yer way. Countin’ more’n a score of cannons—”
“You can count?” I interjected.
Dougal’s laugh was a bit less boisterous this time. “Sure,” he said. “Ah count ye still owe me three drinks, lad. Maybe another one, after this.”
I scowled. “How far are the brigands?” I asked. “And I want a name.”
“Red Reaver’s Revenge is all carved ‘pon her bow,” Dougal replied. “On ye soon, since I disengaged. In fae yer sou’west, in maybe a few minutes.”
I leaned my head back and let out a brief, hysterical laugh.
Red Reaver. Red Reaver.
No wonder Picket had been so loath to give me details. He’d stolen aether off the bloodiest, most ruthless pirate this side of Lyonesse. And now, one of her ships had come looking for our cargo… along with its weight in blood, if the stories were anything to go by.
“Ye want me t’buy ye more time?” Dougal asked.
“No,” I replied. I forced myself back to the moment. “You’re damaged. Hang back. I’ll call you in when we need you. Let them think you’ve cut and run.”
“If ye’re sure,” Dougal confirmed reluctantly. “Ah’ll be here.”
I glanced behind us. The distant form of a large ship had come into view, its hull spattered with telltale red. Its sails were a black affair, each one smeared with a scarlet-painted skull. The Red Reaver’s Revenge was a stout ship, utterly devoid of grace and finesse. It was clumsy as it lumbered over the crest of the canyon, but that hardly mattered—the ship flew with a frankly unnatural speed, gaining on us like an Unseelie monster.
A high-pitched, keening scream sounded over the air between us, sending chills down my spine. It took me a long moment to realise that it wasn’t a scream at all; the sound originated from the Revenge’s aetheric engine, as it picked up pace to gain on us. In my entire life, I’d never heard an engine like that.
We weren’t going to outrun that ship.
My head swam with nervousness. I tried to work my way through it, searching for options. Normally, we could have outmanoeuvred the clumsy Revenge—but in our current environs, boxed in by the canyon, even that slight advantage was useless.
The Revenge was bigger, faster, and more heavily armed than the Rose. We were doomed.
Evie bounded up the steps to join me on the quarterdeck. He stared out towards the scarlet-spattered ship that currently hounded us; his dark eyes were wide with genuine fear. “What in the name of the Everbright is that?” he whispered hoarsely.
“One of Red Reaver’s fleet,” I answered bleakly.
Evie muttered a horrified prayer. Red Reaver was not known to be a religious woman—in fact, the most nightmarish stories about her involved her treatment of captured clergy. Her flagship, the Malefactor, had been named to evoke a sense of vicious, gleeful blasphemy.
The expression on Evie’s face steeled my resolve and galvanised my courage. Those pirates would have him over my dead body, I decided.
I hurried over towards the railing that overlooked the main deck. “Mr Strahl!” I bellowed.
“Aye, Cap’n?” Strahl called back. He was lashing on the last straps of his armour. A nearby crewman held his helmet for him as he geared up.
“The Red Reaver’s Revenge will be upon us soon!” I informed him. “Time to earn your keep again. Iron Rose, prepare to repel boarders!”
A grin slipped across Strahl’s face, nearly as wild as Dougal’s. My bosun was no airman, but he knew battle well. Strahl plucked his helmet from the man next to him and pulled it down over his head. He turned to address the crew loudly.
“You heard the cap’n!” he bellowed. “Time to dance with Death Victorious!”
I became aware of Evie standing next to me, staring down at the gathering below. “You think we can outfight them?” he asked softly. The fear had yet to leave his voice, but I could hear him trying to wrangle it down.
I turned to face him. “So long as we stay in the canyon, the Revenge won’t risk firing its guns on us,” I explained. “They want this cargo back. That means their best bet is to overpower the Rose and pilot it out of here safely. They’ll board; I’m sure of it.”
“Oh no,” a woman’s voice observed behind us, without an ounce of actual fear. “What shall we poor ladies do, Captain Blair?”
My gunnery chief, Miss Lenore Brighton, had finished gathering up her gunnery ladies. They were a ragtag group of marines, scarred and battle-tested—many of them wives and daughters to men who’d fought on both sides of the civil war. The Sundering War had not been kind to those left behind, and neither had the many little Coalition wars after it; the women on my crew had long since taken their lives into their own hands, rather than meekly accepting the lot in life they’d been offered. The sole young man of the group, Mr Billings, had learned much of what he knew of a rifle from the older women.
Lenore didn’t look like an expert sharpshooter—but her appearance never seemed to bother the trajectory of her bullets. An ex-schoolmarm from the Rustlands, she kept her grey-streaked black hair tied back into a no-nonsense bun. Her high-necked blouse was crisp and clean, and her sturdy-heeled boots made a satisfying stomp beneath her plum-coloured skirt as she stormed about the deck. There was a dainty white ribbon tied about her throat, but her other accoutrements were a bit less prim; she had multiple bandoliers draped across her torso, a munitions belt at her waist, a multitude of holstered pistols, and a large rifle across her back. Truly, Miss Brighton knew how to accessorise.
Lenore had a cold, hard face, dark walnut skin, and a narrow nose, once broken—but many people still said that my gunnery chief might be a great beauty if only she would smile. Such remarks had got more than one man shot.
I flashed a vulpine grin at my deadly gunnery chief. “I happen to have an idea of what you could do,” I told her.