Embarrassingly, Midshipman Haldon Lac had a bad case of the hiccups. On this, the most important battle of his entire life! If he hadn’t been so preoccupied with the fight, he’d feel affronted by the indignity of it.
Oxscini had surrendered, but much of the Royal Navy had refused to give up. Disobeying orders, they continued to battle the blue beasts of the Alliance, their ships churning the seas, their cannons filling the air with smoke. They were rebels against their own kingdom now—rebel redcoats.
Could Lac even consider himself a redcoat anymore?
Shot soared over his head and slammed into the sea, drenching him with spray, which successfully shocked him out of his . . . shock.
He grabbed Hobs’s hand. “What’s Ed”—Lac hiccuped— “doing? We have to get him down from there!”
On top of everything, their best friend in the whole world was standing on the Thunderhead’s bowsprit, an easy target. The swift reports of gunfire echoed across the water.
“He looks like he’s posing for a portrait!” Hobs cried as they dashed across the ship.
Ed did look handsome up there, Lac had to admit, and quite heroic, with the black waves of his hair rippling in the breeze, his long, lean form poised above the waves as if he were about to dive.
But looking good didn’t make him any less likely to be killed.
The blue warships of the Alliance were sailing ever closer, turning their guns on the Thunderhead.
But not all of them, Lac realized. The closest ship, with a red rabbit for a figurehead, was lowering its Alliance flags and raising a new one—a white poppy on a black field studded with stars.
The Delienean flag.
They were chanting too, their voices rising in the smokeriddled air: The king lives! Delieneans, to the king!
In fact, all along the enemy line, ships were sending up the Delienean flag. They were turning their great guns on the other blue ships. They were firing.
Lac’s head spun. The Delieneans were defecting from the Alliance. They were joining the rebel redcoats in the defense of Tsumasai Bay.
But why?
A cannonball struck the Thunderhead, throwing Lac and Hobs to the decks as broken bits of wood and shrapnel flew through the air. The lieutenants were shouting. The gun crews were firing. Parts of the deck caught fire, the blaze sweeping across the timbers as sailors tried to beat out the flames.
Lac got to his knees. Something sharp pained his shoulder, but he ignored it. “Ed!” he shouted. “Get—hic—down from there!”
“Sir!” Hobs dragged him under cover as an explosion of scrap shot struck the ship. “You’re bleeding!”
Sparks flew past them as Haldon Lac batted his hands away, still hiccuping. “I’m not your ranking officer anymore, Hobs!” He didn’t know if he even had a rank anymore. Did traitors to the crown get ranks? He shoved down his nausea.
He was a traitor. Traitors didn’t deserve ranks.
On their hands and knees, Lac and Hobs continued to crawl toward the bowsprit. “Ed!”
Hearing his name, Ed glanced over his shoulder. Their gazes met. And for a split second, the boy Lac had met in Jahara looked like a stranger. He seemed taller somehow, more stately in his bearing, wiser and braver and . . . ready.
Ready for what?
Haldon Lac didn’t have time to wonder, however, because as he leapt to his feet again, an enemy broadside shook the hull. The masts toppled. The ship cracked and groaned. There was a deafening explosion as a rapidly expanding blossom of heat caught him in the back, pitching him and Hobs and Ed into the air.
They all hit the sea as the Thunderhead went up in a conflagration of flame and splintered beams.
It was cold in the water! Lac’s shoulder hurt. And he was still hiccuping. But he kicked and fought, searching the turgid waters for his friends.
“Hobs! Ed!”
Broken powder kegs and dirty swabs drifted past him. Gasping sailors scrabbled for floating bits of debris. But he couldn’t find Hobs or Ed.
Finally, Hobs burst from the waves beside him, spitting seawater. “Sir!”
“Don’t call me that, Hobs! Are you all right? Where’s Ed?”
“There, sir!”
Their friend was facedown on the surface, his white shirt appearing almost gauzy in the dark sea. No! Lac swam for him, his well-toned arms and legs carrying him easily through the waves. He turned the boy in his arms, hoping for the flicker of his eyelids, for breath.
Ed coughed.
Haldon Lac let out a sound that was part gasp of relief, part hiccup. “I’ve got you. I’m not letting go.”
Ed patted his arm.
Lac hiccuped again.
“Try holding your breath, sir,” Hobs volunteered as he swam up to them.
“You can’t hold your—hic—breath while you’re swimming! And stop calling me sir!” Lac gagged as salt water splashed into his mouth.
The bay was in chaos. Rebel redcoats were rushing the enemy line. Warships flying the Delienean flag were firing on the blue beasts that had, moments ago, been their allies. Haldon Lac didn’t understand what was going on, but he knew enough to clutch Ed tighter when an enormous blue vessel drew up beside him.
But the soldiers staring down at them from the rails didn’t fire.
“It’s okay,” Ed murmured. “Don’t worry.”
Rope ladders struck the water around them, and the strangers scrambled down the side of their ship.
The first woman to reach them hesitated, an extra length of rope dangling from her hand. Then she bowed her head and said, “Your Majesty.”
For a moment, Lac was confused. His family had no royal blood . . . that he knew of. But maybe . . . ?
The woman looped the rope under Ed’s arms as he grasped for the rungs of the ladder. Other people helped him find handholds as he began climbing out of the water.
“We thought you were dead,” she said.
“So did I,” Ed replied.
The soldiers helped Hobs and Lac, still bewildered, onto the rope ladders. Shot soared through the air around them as they climbed over the rail. The gun crews were still at it. The powder monkeys were rushing across the decks as the officers shouted orders and rifles popped in the fighting tops overhead.
But amid the frenzy of battle, the captain was kneeling, head bowed, before Ed’s dripping form.
Haldon Lac’s eyes widened as he finally understood.
Ed was a king.
And his name wasn’t Ed—it was Eduoar Corabelli II, the one true king of Deliene.
“Come on, Captain,” Ed—the king—said. “We’ve got a battle to fight.”
Immediately, the captain rose. He snapped his fingers at a pair of soldiers, who came forward with thick wool blankets, which they offered first to Ed, who took one with a nod, and then to Lac and Hobs.
Grabbing a blanket, Hobs immediately swung it around his shoulders. But Lac let his dangle limply from his hand as he stared at Ed. The hiccups, it seemed, had been shocked right out of him. “You—” he began, ducking as the cannons fired again.
Ed nodded. “Me.”
“Since when—”
The boy smiled sheepishly. “Since always.”
“But you—” Lac whirled on Hobs. “Are you one too?”
“Royalty? Don’t think so.” Hobs shrugged. “But stranger things have happened.”
Haldon Lac moaned. All these months he’d been with the Lonely King? All those unwashed months? He’d smelled so bad! In front of a king! For a moment, he wanted to faint.
But there was no time to faint, he reminded himself. There was still a battle to fight.
“Your Majesty.” Despite the rocking of the ship, he managed a respectably deep bow. “We are at your service.”
Beside him, Hobs bowed too.
It all made sense now: the grace, the courtly manners, the complete ignorance of common chores. Ed was a king. Even if they’d been the same age, Lac never would’ve stood a chance. Not as a partner.
But as a friend?
“Just Ed to you.” Ed put his hands on both their shoulders, making them stand again. “To both of you.”
Lac beamed. He was friends with a king!
Then the king was whisked to the quarterdeck with the officers, leaving Lac and Hobs in the care of the Delienean soldiers. The ship that had picked them up was called the Red Hare, and soon it was flying a second flag beneath the Delienean black-and-white—a gold crown.
In the midst of the battle, the Delieneans rallied to their king. Explosions rent the air. Ships splintered. The whitecaps turned red with blood as bodies were thrown into the sea. Lac and Hobs joined the riflemen at the prow of the Red Hare, firing at enemy gun crews as they tried to load their cannons. For a time, it seemed that the combined might of the rebel redcoats and the Delienean defectors would turn the tide of battle against the Alliance.
If they won, Lac might be allowed back into the Royal Navy. He might be Midshipman Haldon Lac again.
But the enemy still had more ships. They still had superior weaponry. They still had the upper hand. Slowly, they began to drive the resisters together, circling them like sharks.
“This doesn’t look good, sir,” Hobs said.
“Don’t call me sir.” Lac squinted through the rail. A red ship with white markings on its prow was sailing at them from the west, flying the flag of a boy with bowed head and crossed arms. It didn’t belong to any navy Lac recognized. Had it come from the capital? Was it a civilian vessel? No, it couldn’t be, not with those great guns on its decks.
An outlaw. Where had an outlaw come from?
Haldon Lac popped up from under cover and fired at the nearest Alliance ship. “Ed—I mean, Your Majes—I mean, Ed!” he called, pointing.
On the quarterdeck, the king nodded. He spoke to the captain, who put a spyglass to his eye.
The strange outlaw ship was coming closer. On its decks were boys, alternately waving frantically at the Red Hare and pointing south.
Even to Lac, their meaning was clear: Follow us.
They wanted the resisters to retreat to the south. Had the southern entrance of Tsumasai Bay been cleared? By outlaws? That would be their only way of escape now.
The red outlaw ship sailed straight up behind one of the blue beasts of the Alliance and let loose a broadside that raked the giant warship fore and aft, shattering glass and timbers. The enemy line faltered.
The Red Hare seized its chance. It broke away from the rest of the resisters, sailing past the Alliance. The outlaw ship turned, heading south out of Tsumasai Bay. The rebel redcoats and the Delienean defectors followed.
The enemy ships began the pursuit.
Haldon Lac spared one last glance for Oxscini’s disappearing shoreline—the stone forts, the forested hills, the wooden houses on stilts at the edge of the water. He’d betrayed his orders. He’d betrayed his queen. He was leaving his beloved kingdom behind. He didn’t know if he’d ever see it again . . . or if he deserved to.