There was a complement of swivel guns on the deck, a pitiful answer to the full broadside of cannon the Galatine vessel could deliver, and I let the charm magic dance over them as I considered them. We had questioned how a charm might affect the accuracy or safety of a gun; now was not the time to test the theory. A sailor pulled a crate of ammunition from the hold; I wondered, briefly, if I could ward off damp powder and ensure clean firing if I charmed the black powder. I might also render the explosive inert.
I shook my head and turned to the sailors themselves. I thought to charm their clothing, but stopped. They would have refused, and there was something unsettling about charming them against their will. I would charm the ship or its supplies, but not them, not their personal items, without their consent. The Galatine soldiers and their charmed uniforms were different; some of them simply didn’t believe, but Galatines didn’t, as a rule, have moral compunctions against charms. Not so the Fenians. Instead, I turned back to the sails, imbuing more charms into them, plying it in thick strands around the rigging as well.
The captain stopped briefly to speak to Alba. From their exchange I knew he had tried to insist we go below; from his red face I knew Alba’s refusal had been final. He shouted something in Fenian, and she asked a quiet question. I tried to focus on the sails, but the deafening report of a shot from the Royalist ship broke my concentration.
A warning shot only, but I shuddered.
“He is suggesting surrender,” Alba said, glowering. “He does not wish to fight to preserve the cargo.”
I bit my lip. Of course, this tub couldn’t stand against the Galatine ship; I was foolish for even trying to buffer us, to raise the possibility of victory. Charms couldn’t make the impossible possible.
Alba argued with the captain, while the Galatine ship was close enough now that I could see them readying to fire again. Likely this shot would be aimed for us, aimed for the sails and rigging to incapacitate us and make us easy to board. When that happened, I could be discovered. I had to assume I would be.
Quickly, without considering the ramifications of what I was doing, I spun darkness from the ether. I pulled black luck and death and misfortune, drew it tight around itself like a ball. With my fist clenched and my heart pounding against my ribs, I hurled it toward the Royalist ship. More specifically, toward a gunport and the maw of a cannon inside, its crew in the middle of loading the gun.
The black sparkling orb collided with the black cast iron of the gun and enveloped it. It didn’t press itself into the metal; I hadn’t expected that, and before I could decide if I should try to embed the curse in the unmalleable iron, the crew fired the gun.
It exploded.
Orange fire erupted in the side of the ship, and though several other guns fired shortly after, the shouts and chaos reached us from across the water. They were, for the moment, incapacitated. One gun crew, maybe more, injured. I shook off the guilt—they would have killed me. They still might. We had bought time, nothing more.
Then I saw the bright tongues of flame licking the interior deck of the ship, tracing the wood and lapping up one mast. The first explosion that followed shocked me, but the others I began to anticipate, one after the other, as casks of powder exploded and ignited more of the ship.
Alba took a tiny step forward, mouth open, surprised out of her pious complacency for perhaps the first time in years.
She turned to me as the captain gaped next to her, clearly congratulating himself on his good fortune.
This was only the beginning, her bright eyes promised while my knees buckled and darkness like that I had hurled at the ship seemed to dig into the pit of my stomach.
12
WE LANDED NEAR HAZELWHITE WITH NO FURTHER INTERVENTION from the Royalist navy. The weather hadn’t turned completely toward autumn this far south, and balmy sunshine bathed the shore where we landed longboat after longboat of supplies. The Fenian captain grumbled about the lack of proper docks, but he made haste unloading the crates. The black powder came last, barrel after volatile barrel.
I had gotten my feet wet alighting from the longboat, and took off my shoes and socks to try to dry them in the sun. It was already weaker sunlight than the height of summer, but I wrung out my socks and hoped for the best. In the encampment, near Hazelwhite village, there would be fresh socks and, far more important, Theodor. But for now I had to wait, with wet feet and poor patience, for the wagons that would take us and our supplies inland.
In truth, I was nervous. My role had been clear while abroad with Alba. I had felt a certain usefulness, necessity even; the army needed supplies and a boost against the better-equipped Royalists, and I could provide that. Now my role was unclear. Was I rejoining the Reformist army as anything aside from Theodor’s consort, Kristos’s sister, and a pair of willing but unhelpful hands?
I turned the socks over, though they were still clammy and cold. Even rejoining Theodor—what would that mean? I had grown used to being together, to working alongside one another. Now I had grown used to being apart again. Surely he had changed, under the weight of leading one side of a civil war. Would he see me the same way as before, or I him?
The wagons crested the hill above the shore, and I watched them eagerly, but the sun had shifted westward and I squinted. I sighed. I would have to wait, then, to even see if I recognized the wagon drivers. I doubted I would.
My socks were still damp when the wagons reached us, stopping before the sand, the oxen drawing them slowing obediently to a halt. I drew my socks over unwilling feet, making a face at the damp wool clinging to my toes.
“Sophie!” A familiar voice echoed across the strand and a figure ran toward me. I gasped, though I couldn’t see past the angle of the sun. I knew that voice.
Theodor.
He careened toward me and sank to the ground beside my crate, knees in the sand and hands finding mine. He laid his head on my lap and for a long moment neither one of us moved, shocked and overwhelmed by the realness of it, that we were both truly here, able to touch, able to speak. I lifted a tentative hand and laid it on his hair, overcome by the familiarity of the honey-brown queue under my fingers.
I finally found my voice. “I didn’t think you’d come yourself.”
He looked up. “Of course I did! The messenger said you were here, nothing could keep me away.”
“Not even a war?”
He waved a hand. “Not even that. Well, maybe if we were actually fending off a Royalist incursion. But we’re not.”
I took his hands in mine and lifted them from my lap, drawing him up beside me while I finished putting on my sodden shoes. “Not yet, anyway.”
“It’s coming,” he said. “But now we can face it. We’re outfitting the soldiers at a rate you wouldn’t believe—maybe don’t pick on the craftsmanship of the coats too much,” he added. I stifled a laugh. “And shot and powder—cannon coming, too. You did this.”
“Alba did most of it,” I countered. “And I’m afraid we’re bearers of some disappointment about the ships.”
“Don’t worry about it now,” Theodor said. “You’ll debrief everyone at the officers’ headquarters as soon as we’re back. But for now”—he smiled gently—“for now I could breathe you like air.”