The view from the elevated platform was excellent. Though Ebon’s Hill hid everything in Weasel Rock and Overhill, Kip could see West Bay and East Bay and the still-burning fires at the Great Fountain. The predawn light was just beginning to tell the tale of how much damage the Blood Robes had done to the city. Smoky plumes rose from numerous areas, but Karris had stockpiled water and firefighting supplies, and organized neighborhood teams, and it seemed those fires weren’t spreading. The rattle of muskets was still constant, sometimes in volleys, but more often in crackles around the entire island. Few of the cannons were firing at this hour. Most had either been silenced or were waiting for the dawn to better reveal their targets.
The superviolet, the blue, the yellow, and the green bane had been destroyed. As far as he could see, the rest were still afloat. He didn’t want to think what that probably meant for Ferkudi and Ben-hadad. He wanted to rejoin the fight, but he knew Commander Fisk and Tisis weren’t going to let him do that. Probably they wouldn’t have let him fight even if he started turning cartwheels. But they were right, he was in no shape for any of that. He was useless.
It was not a good feeling.
Now, what was that voice he’d imagined?
“What was that?” Tisis asked.
“What?”
“In the water!”
But whatever it had been, Kip missed it—and turned his aching head and burning eyes as far as possible while doing so. He immediately regretted the action. All right, definitely not in any state to fight. He might as well volunteer to go fall on an enemy’s spear.
“It went right past the Lily’s Stem,” Tisis said. “Here I was about to suggest we get back to the Chromeria to be safer, but . . . if that thing hadn’t turned it could’ve taken out the bridge without even noticing.”
“A sea demon?” Kip asked.
Then he heard a throaty boom of some huge cannon and turned. Few other cannons were firing now, and none sounded like that.
“What was that?” Tisis said. “I think I know that gun. Orholam’s beard, is that The Compelling Argument?”
“The what?”
“My sister tried to buy it off a merchant Phineas something maybe? He wouldn’t sell, and said he’d never make its like again. Swore it was destined for someone else, but demonstrated it for her to try to drum up other business.”
Kip could only see a wisp of smoke in the air in the direction he’d heard the blast. Sometimes cannoneers wrapped burning sackcloth around a shell to be able to watch its trajectory. In a few more moments, he was rewarded with another shot, arcing identically to the first, to thud into the sub-red bane.
Commander Fisk had a long-lens to his eye. He handed it to Kip with an odd look. “Please tell me I’m not crazy.”
In the half-light, though, it was hard to find anything.
“Find the old Tyrean embassy. Couple points right of it, halfway out in the bay,” Fisk said.
“Where’s his ship?” Kip asked. For in the water, there appeared to be a ship’s square forecastle, moving at speed, undulating, floating without the advantage of a ship. A man danced to an inaudible beat, with hot points of light burning in his beard as he loaded a huge cannon all by himself.
“Gunner?” Kip said. What was that forecastle resting on?
Gunner fired again, then jumped up on the barrel of his big cannon and danced from one foot to the other, eyes straining as if waiting for something. He pumped his arm as if successful, though at what, Kip had no idea.
A moment later, the entire sub-red bane exploded. Light flashed over the islands and a cloud mushroomed in the early morning, smoke rolling in on itself.
“Did he just—?” Tisis asked.
“He sure seems to think so. And—is Gunner on top of a sea demon?!”
“Not sure,” Fisk said.
But whatever it was, Kip wasn’t going to see it, because Gunner and his floating forecastle disappeared behind the Tyrean embassy.
“Enough. This one is under my protection!” someone shouted.
Kip looked around. It was a familiar voice this time. But there was nothing to be seen. A feeling of foreboding came over him. “Rea?” he said. “Rea Siluz?”
Tisis looked at him. “Who?”
“Nothing,” Kip said. “Were you going to go wrap that wrist and get some poppy?”
When Aram had deflected her pistol during her attempt to shoot Zymun, he’d sprained her wrist. It was very swollen now, but she hadn’t wanted to leave Kip, hadn’t left all through long hours of the morning.
“Yeah.” But she looked at him oddly.
“Commander Fisk?” Kip said. “I’ll stay right here, promise.”
As they went, Kip walked to the very edge of the platform and craned his neck. A rain of burning embers was still drifting down from the sub-red bane—luckily for the city, most of it was landing in the water. Kip could just barely see Gunner’s forecastle—now resting on the seawall of East Bay. The pirate was gesticulating furiously, but he didn’t appear hurt, and the forecastle deck was leaning at an angle as if it had been dumped off the sea demon’s back.
Kip stepped back, and something brushed his shoulder.
There was no one on the platform with him, but that touch made his whole body tingle. He looked at his shoulder. The sleeve was cut open—and smoking. The barest line of blood welled up as he gripped his arm.
The premonition he’d felt suddenly resounded again in his gut with all the urgency of a sick man who’d ignored the first belly twinge and now was about to vomit.
Abaddon.
He tilted his head back and saw—and he saw in glorious, weighty, more-real-than-real color, because as he was drawn inexplicably, inexorably into that overlapping realm by the great immortal’s presence, he was seeing not only with his physical eyes, but he was seeing as they saw.
As Kip’s eyes focused on this other world, he saw Abaddon, king of locusts, spinning a tight loop in the air, something like a black blade seething in his hand.
Rea Siluz staggered near Kip, her arm drooping, and he could only guess that she had just deflected a blow from him.
And not for the first time.
But she didn’t pause. She leapt instantly, faster than human thought, bringing up a blazing sword—
The concussion of their collision blew away Abaddon’s illusory body and face. The black, smoking fragments dazzled Kip’s eyes but not Rea’s. Abaddon beat her back, and with hammer blows of sword on sword and sword on shield, the immortal battered Rea out of the air like a man swatting a moth to the ground.
She fell to the street below the platform, elegant armor scraping on the cobblestones, baffled, afraid.
Ten paces out, the two Mighty nunks looked around as if they’d heard something. But they hadn’t been drawn into the bubble; they couldn’t see them.
The locust thing that was Abaddon drew Comfort, his mother-of-pearl-handled multichambered pistol, and shot rapidly at Rea’s prone form.
Rea blocked the shots with shield and then sword, getting knocked back and back, finally falling to the cobblestones. She looked more shocked at his power than in fear for her life, though.
Smoke curling lovingly from his pistols around his body, he paused in firing, not to reload: that pistol never needed reloading. “Concede this world to me, Aurea.” He gestured to his pistol. “This is no Sundering Blade, but if I kill you with it here, you can still never return to this realm. Go. Tell yourself that you’ll be back someday. I’ve won today.”