“I don’t see any boats out alone,” Cruxer said.
“Winsen, you’ve got the best eyes,” Kip said.
“Nothing. None alone,” the young man said.
“If they’re trying to get encircled,” Cruxer said, “and they have more than one bane, then maybe they’re planning to raise all the bane, all around them at once.”
Kip caught where he was going. The bane would rise in a giant ring, matching the encircling Chromeria fleet—and destroying all of it simultaneously. “So the superviolets who are raising the bane have to be in the middle of the formation. The command skimmer’s too big to penetrate between those ships. We’ll have to split. Ben, I know you said you were working on making the Blue Falcon IX submersible, how’s it going?”
“This is Blue Falcon XIII,” Ben-hadad said quickly.
“I know how you work. I see the core ideas already here. This honeycomb structure here? You told me once in some other application that that’s super strong.”
Ben-hadad expelled a breath. “Last resort, understand? And no more than maybe half speed, at most. Slower for you and Big Leo. Even with the wind shield reinforced to be a wave shield, either the water will sweep you off or it’ll disintegrate if you go too fast. But this generation was never meant—”
As he was speaking, an enormous cloud of ravens burst from the White King’s fleet. But there was nothing random or independent about their flight.
“Razor wings,” Einin said.
Winsen cursed aloud. The birds were will-cast to seek out rigging or crewmen and slice through them.
One of them exploded in midair.
“And they’ve figured out how to rig them to be bombs,” Winsen said. “Bomb wings. Great.”
“They can’t carry much explosive,” Kip said. “What are they doing? Ben?”
“They used pigeons before. But pigeons probably aren’t smart enough to be taught to seek out the powder kegs,” he said. “These are ravens. I’d guess they’ve will-cast them to seek out the gun decks.”
Damn. A single crazed raven flapping and cawing and threatening to explode at any moment could delay an entire gun deck from firing, and that was if it didn’t make it to the barrels of black powder.
“What else have they will-cast?” Ferkudi said. “Are those shark fins?”
Ben-hadad looked over at Cruxer. “Commander,” he said. “You’ve got to stop us. This is suicide.”
But Cruxer had his eyes closed. And when he opened them, a smile curled his lips and light lit his eyes. “Shh,” he said, and his voice was a whisper under the storm. “Don’t you feel it?”
“Feel what?”
“The wind behind us is greater than the wind against us.”
Ben-hadad looked back and forth at the rest of them, their faces eager and fierce. The rattle of swivel guns and muskets and the taunting shouts of both sides rolled across the waves, and only seemed to inflame the Mighty further. “Why am I the only one bothered by that being demonstrably fucking false?!”
Kip gave a few more instructions: where they should meet afterward, what their sign would be that they had to retreat, and a quick check that they all had their flares and hullwreckers.
“Ready to separate on your mark,” Big Leo said to Kip.
Kip knew he should be afraid. Or he should be worried that he was leading his friends to their deaths.
They might die. But he had a suspicion that they wouldn’t.
They were only a few hundred paces out now.
“Remember,” Kip said. “Nothing matters except stopping them from raising the bane. The Chromeria’s fleet can lose even if the bane stay underwater, but it will definitely lose if the bane rise.”
Big Leo said, “And we’ll probably die, too.”
They looked at him.
“You know, just in case anyone was lacking motivation,” the big man said.
“Be Mighty and of courage,” Kip told his friends. “Einin, stay with Cruxer. Winsen, you’re with me this time; live or die. Together.”
Winsen took his meaning, and his trust, and nodded. “Together . . . my lord.”
Kip said, “And three, two, one, mark!”
Chapter 66
“There’s a man here to see you, High Lord Promachos.” The vice chamberlain cleared his throat as he stepped just inside Andross’s door. “A Parian. He, uh, wouldn’t give his name.”
Grinwoody was off doing Orholam knew what again. As the slave aged, he was absent more and more often, and he always pretended it was on some business for Andross and not that he was lazy and due for replacement. But in his defense, Grinwoody would never let this happen.
Andross peered at his vice chamberlain. “Do I look like a village magistrate whom strangers may approach at will on the green?”
“No, High Excellency.”
“Then what do you mean he wouldn’t give his name?”
“He was very convincing, milord,” one of the Blackguards at the door said, seeming intent to rescue the poor man. A new girl, Mina.
Andross sneered at her. “And this is why they used to only elevate Blackguards who could make it through the night without wetting the bed.”
She withered.
But neither moved.
“He was very compelling, my lord, and he gave proofs enough to satisfy at each station,” the other Blackguard, Presser, said.
Andross barked, “Not at this one. I’m busy. And you, Presser, you’re old enough to shave by now, aren’t you? You should know better. And keep your pup in line or I’ll kick her down to a scrub.”
“My lord, many pardons,” the vice chamberlain said. “He said if you put him off, to remind you of what a young woman said of you, forty years ago now, ‘A man of Parnassian storms and no wonder, for in you is joined a volcanic wit . . .’ ”
It was a crash of thunder heard when the sky is blue.
“What? He said no more?” Andross demanded.
“I asked. He knew no more of it, dangling as it is.”
It took Andross so long he felt embarrassed. His memory—No! It had not failed him. Not yet. He was not so old. The scroll of years was merely so long, so densely packed with incident, and not filed in a library year by year. The man being a Parian had thrown him.
For she had been Atashian.
His first love. Ninharissi. He smiled despite himself.
No one had been on that balcony with them that day. No one else would dare send a messenger with such a ‘proof,’ either, that mixture of a challenge—could Andross remember so far back with such a small prompt?—but also respect, believing that of course Andross would remember back so far with such a small prompt.
The phrase had not even come at the climax of their relationship, though it had come on the night that had changed the entire course of both their lives, and of history itself.
“Shall I send him away?” Presser asked, shifting from foot to foot, rubbing circles awkwardly on one of his buttocks.
It was impossible that she should send him a message. No. Not exactly impossible. And it was impossible that it could have been sent by anyone else.
“Bring him in.”
Andross had entertained a hope that he might recognize the old man. He didn’t. Dark skin faded by the years, clothing fine and well maintained but showing wear. Thus, middling nobility or a rich merchant dressing a bit above his station. There were probably a dozen of the former sort that Andross could call to mind, and several hundred of the latter that he hadn’t bothered to memorize.