Page 28 of Return of the Vengeful Quee

“Ship, ahoy!” Joren’s voice echoed down from the crow’s nest.

Charis whipped around, scanning the waters off their port side, her stomach knotting.

A small frigate with a trio of masts was on the horizon.

“Is it a pirate ship?” Her heart seemed to slam into her chest as she took a shaky step forward to peer into the distance.

“No one else would have reason to be out here.” Orayn sounded grim.

Charis forced herself to speak, though her lips felt numb. “No one but the Rakuuna.”

“I’ll arm the crew,” Holland said, already starting for the stairs.

“I’ll get more speed out of the masts,” Orayn said.

“Wait.” Charis’s voice was thin, the air in her lungs disappearing as the ship began speeding toward them.

The vessel moved unnaturally, as though the swells and currents of the northern sea had no effect on it. It was traveling in a straight line toward her ship, like an arrow released from a bow, and closing the distance between the two boats with impossible speed.

“How are they moving that fast?” Holland demanded. “And why aren’t the swells slowing it down? Is it pirates?”

“No pirate ship I know moves like that,” Orayn said.

The outline of the ship became clearer as it drew closer. A small frigate. Three tidy sails. And a trio of green lanterns hanging from the forecastle.

For an instant Charis couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t do anything beyond fumble for the railing with trembling hands as panic slammed into her.

“It’s the Rakuuna.” She pushed the words through numb lips. “They’ve found us.”

“Weapons!” Holland cried as he took the stairs two at a time. “All hands, arm yourselves!”

Orayn gripped the helm so hard his knuckles turned pale. “We can’t outrun them, Your Majesty. Best to hide and hope they believe us when we tell them they’ve got the wrong ship.”

But unless they could somehow manage to make themselves look like pirates within the next few minutes, they’d never be able to convince the Rakuuna they had any business this far away from civilized kingdoms. Besides, all the Rakuuna had to do was send a single scout into the water to check for spikes embedded on the ship’s hull and the ruse would be discovered. Any ship that regularly sailed the western seas had spikes to defend against sea monsters.

“They won’t believe we’re pirates.” Her voice shook as badly as her hands. “They’ll either search the entire craft, finding our entire supply of poison, or they’ll just tear the ship to pieces and sink us without asking a single question.”

“But they’re after you.” He looked back at the ship, which was gaining on them rapidly. “They don’t want to drown you.”

“They’ll just fish me out of the water, and we’ll have lost our only weapon against them.” She squinted at the horizon. Better to face the possibility of pirates and sea monsters than to be caught by the Rakuuna. “Get more speed out of the masts, Orayn. We need to run into the western sea.”

Orayn shouted orders. Chaos broke out across the deck. Sailors trimmed the masts and grabbed weapons. Finn shouted orders to load the cannons. Holland ran from one end of the deck to the other, handing out weapons to those who didn’t have one yet.

The ship picked up speed, but still, the Rakuuna vessel in pursuit was faster. Charis frantically looked around for options.

She had the poison stored in the belly of the ship but no idea how to use it.

They had cannons and swords, but so had every other ship the Rakuuna had sunk outside Arborlay’s harbor.

Maybe if she loaded the poison into the cannons, she would have a chance at defending the ship, but doing that took time she wasn’t going to have.

Mentally kicking herself for not having created some kind of weapon already, even though she didn’t yet know whether the poison worked on contact or if it needed to be ingested, she started down the stairs toward the deck. Better to put up a fight than go quietly.

Her stomach pitched as she reached the bottom of the staircase, and she struggled to swallow past the terror clogging her throat.

She was going to be taken, and her crew was going to die.

Either the monsters would punch holes in her ship and drag them all to the depths, submerging the poison along with her crew, or they would board the ship, murder her crew who would surely try to protect her, and then take her back to Calera, where she would either be traded to Alaric for jewels or killed to put down the rebellion that was growing across Calera in her name.

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