With his departure into the waves, the pirates dispersed. Light glinted off theirweapons—arandom assortment of cutlasses, machetes, pistols and muskets, all held or slung with a victorious nonchalance. Their skin colors and clothing choices reflected no specific people or nation. Not Northern or Southern, no Mereish or Cape, or Aeadine or Usti.
Pirates. The word slapped my wits back to life and I wavered forward, ready to run, but my feet refused to coordinate. I staggered right into a waiting pair of arms. More figures converged, slinking in behind me and circling like wolves.
The woman that had caught me murmured in my ear, “That’s no way to greet a lord. Stand tall and mind your manners, now.”
She thrust me upright and this time, I found my feet. Mycaptors—thepirates—partedto allow a man through. He was of medium height, dark-haired with a short beard and an athletic form beneath buckskin breeches and an open coat. He wore a cravat but no waistcoat over his shirt, exposing a handsbreadth of tanned chest. He carried a cutlass, slick with blood, which he passed off to a nearby pirate.
I’d just seen that weapon slit open the beaten man’s belly, and the realization made my throat clot with bile. Off to the side I heard a steady drip, and looked up to see the man they’d strung from the yard had ceased his twitching. The smell of piss and blood wafted to me.
I bent over and retched on the deck, spilling half-digested beans, fish and bread before my captors’ boots.
The man who’d held the cutlass neatly stepped out of the way and paused, waiting for me to stop heaving. I coughed and spat and choked on a sob, blinking up at him through tear-filled eyes and shanks of messy hair.
“The ghisting escaped, Cap’n,” the pirate who'd taken the man’s sword murmured, though the words didn’t root in my mind right away. I was still spitting bile and trying to find my balance.
The newcomer looked displeased. Firelight still cast his face into shadow, but this close I could make out hisfeatures—steel-greyeyes, a man in his mid-thirties with a fine jaw and a face that wasn’t so much handsome as demanding.
Power. I recognized his unnaturalness on an instinctual level. It was like what I felt when near Randalf’s ghisting, or in the Ghistwold. But this was rawer and sharper, tainted withiron—humanand hateful.
He saw the recognition in my eyes and held my gaze. My thoughts scattered like ants as he closed the remaining space between us.
“It’s you.” His voice was a summer wind, cutting through the cold and brushing across my cheeks.
He knew me? Impossible. Shivers skittered from the back of my neck to the tips of my fingers. Away. I had to get away. But where? I was on a ship, still at sea. And thoseflames…
“Where is Randalf’s ship?” I asked.
“Hm?” His eyebrows lifted slightly. “Speak up.”
“TheJuliette, where is she?”
He glanced over his shoulder to the fire. It was far enough out that, as the pirates parted, I could see the shape of the entire ship—Juliette, burning upon the waves. A few shapes dangled from her yard arms, and it took me a moment to realize that they were more people, hung from ankles, throats or hands. As I stared, mesmerized, I saw some of them were still moving. Convulsing. Roasting alive.
The horror of it lashed me like waves. I couldn’t rejoice at the demise of Randalf and his crew, not like this. So many lives ended in agony, before my very eyes.
Why would the pirates burn their prize? Randalf’s ship wasn’t large and the hole the pirates had blasted in it was certainly a flaw, but it was worth money, especially with a ghisting aboard.
A ghisting who had escaped, I now pieced together. A ghisting who’d looked at me with solidarity. She’d been freed by the fire, as ghistings often were.
The thought of her escape comforted me, in a distant, melancholy way. But that consolation was fleeting. I caught a waft of crisping fat on the wind, and the scream of a dying crewman aboardJulietteshrilled over the roar of the flames.
Above me, the hanging man swung with the roll of the ship, still dripping piss and blood.
“Are you going to ask who I am?” The pirate pulled my attention back to him. “Or perhaps you remember me?”
I found my voice. “Why would I remember you?”
His eyes dropped, lingering in the center of my chest in a way that made my skin crawl. It wasn’t a lustful look, but a pryingone—asif he expected to see something on my dirty, cold-pinched skin. He reached out, pushing my collar aside an inch, and his finger brushed across my flesh.
Run. The impulse struck me again like an arrow in the dark. It was directionless, futile and irrational, but I couldn’t stop it. I inched back, coming up against the mainmast again. This time I didn’t stop. I twisted, ducking around the trunk and shoving through the crowd.
I burst out onto open deck. Pirates backed off and theircaptain—theman I should know but didnot—trailedin my wake.
“There’s nowhere to go,” he called. There was no taunting to his voice, just statement of fact. “You’re safe here, with me. No need to run. No more need to hide.”
I hit the ship’s rail and stared over it, an animal in a trap. Dark water.Juliette, burning. Bodies, writhing. I locked the back of one hand over my mouth to keep from screaming and stared at the waves below.
The pirate was right. There was no escape. I was no ghisting, to slip between worlds or off through the sea, immortal and deathless. I was just a woman in a world of sudden brutality, and I had only one way out.