Sam had a million questions to ask Braeden, but they had no time to spare, not with the smell of smoke thick in their nostrils. The fire drakes must have breathed flames onto the ship once more, because the acrid smell had grown worse, seeping in through the cracks in the ceiling above.
"Hurry," the guard begged them, and so they did, scrambling up the companionway to the deck, first Azi, then the emperor, then Braeden, with Sam and the guard taking up the rear. From the narrow nook at the bottom of the companionway, Sam worriedly watched Braeden climb up the rope ladder. He favored his left arm, letting it hang limp to the side, using only his right arm and legs to swing himself upwards. At least he was here, in front of her. Alive. He'd come back for her after all.
But he'd brought trouble with him.
Shoving that thought aside, Sam grabbed hold of the ladder and climbed up after him. She poked her head through the opening and breathed in a lungful of smoke. Wheezing and eyes watering, she managed to haul herself up onto the deck next to Braeden and the others. Once her eyes stopped watering, she took in the state of the ship. The mizzenmast's sails were riddled with gaping holes scorched around the edges. The lowest sail on the foremast was still burning, and the ship's crew were frantically working to put out the fire, dousing it with buckets of seawater. While there was a lot of coughing and wheezing, no one aboard the ship appeared to be seriously hurt.
Sam spotted Kameko hanging back with the imperial guard at the stern of the ship. Kameko held a bow loosely in one hand and pressed a spyglass to her face with the other, head tilted back as far as it would go. Sam followed her gaze, looking up.
Mother above. The sight of one fire drake had been something. The sight of two soaring through the skies, as graceful as hawks and a thousand times more deadly, was both awesome and frightening. Whereas the fire drake Braeden rode in on had been a dark shadow, a purple so deep it was nearly black, they were vibrantly colored, one patterned cerulean blue and silver and the other striped scarlet and gold. Under the harsh light of Emese's sun, they possessed a terrible, mesmerizing sort of beauty not meant for this world. It was almost a shame to kill them.
"Holy Gods," breathed the emperor, gaping up at them, all arrogance wiped from his face.
Sam had almost forgotten he was there. "Shouldn't you go below deck, Your Highness? It isn't safe up here."
Emperor Kazan glared at her. "I will not hide behind my men like a coward. I can fight as well as any of them."
"She meant no offense, Majesty," Braeden broke in. "In Thule, kings command armies, but they themselves do not fight."
"Huh," said the emperor, sounding genuinely befuddled. "How can a man who has never fought himself lead an army to victory?"
Azi shushed them with a wave of his hand. "We can discuss Thulian politics another time, my liege. After the demons are dead." Running his fingers through his beard, he muttered, "Why do they not attack in earnest?"
Sam had been wondering the same thing. The fire drakes dipped and swooped in circles around the shipârather like vultures that hadn't yet decided whether or not they were prey. Sparks flew from their nostrils, dotting the blue sky with flecks of orange and gold. Sam held her breath as the blue-and-silver scaled demon dropped in low, its talons scraping the top of the mainmast, showering them with tiny wood shavings. Archers shot feather-tipped arrows towards it, but it was already soaring higher and the arrows missed their mark.
"There," said Braeden, pointing at the blue fire drake. "See those black strings hanging from its muzzle? Those are reins."
"What are you saying, boy?" demanded Azi.
"I'm saying where there are reins, there are riders."
The emperor squinted up at the sky. "Then why can't we see them?"
Braeden said, "They call themselves Shadow Sisters, Your Highness, for more reason than one. They can manipulate shadows and wrap them around themselves like a cloak. Magic, they claim, gifted to them by the Shadow Master himself."
Sam's stomach roiled with nausea that had nothing to do with seasickness. Shadow Master. One of Teivel's many given names. Throughout the ages, He had been called by many others: Deceiver. Betrayer. Father of Lies. But Shadow Master was the only one that spoke of the power that was his alone. "Teivel is imprisoned in the Afterlight," she said unsteadily, looking to Braeden for confirmation.
"He is," Braeden agreed, saying no more than that. Sam didn't feel particularly comforted.
"These Shadow Sisters," asked Azi, unstrapping a thin, curved blade from his hip. "can they fight?"
Braeden nodded once. "They're convent trained, my lord."
Azi's gaze widened. "By the Convent of the Sun?"
"I knew it!" the emperor said, a little too gleefully. "I'll have those lying witches burned at the stake." His grin slipped at Azi's reproving frown. "After they receive a fair and impartial trial," he amended.
"From what I gathered, they're a secret cult within an already secretive organization," said Braeden. "I'm not sure they all know each other's identities. I've never seen them remove their veils, not even around each other."
Sam suddenly felt exhausted. Was no one ever who they said they were? Maybe the Gods were punishing her for her own deceit. There was probably a lesson in there somewhere, but right now, Sam didn't give a damn. She just wanted to know her friends from her enemies. "The Arbiterâis she one of them?"
"I don't think so," said Braeden. The corners of his mouth kicked up. "I think she's just a righteous bitch."
The emperor let out an appreciative snort.
"What about Kameko?" Sam asked, darting a glance toward her cousin. Kameko was staring at Braeden like he was Teivel himself.
"I don't know," said Braeden, watching the sky through narrowed eyes, "but I think we're about to find out."
The scarlet fire drake dropped at alarming speed, falling so fast Sam thought it would crash right through the deck. At the last second, it spread out its enormous wings and pulled up short, hovering just above the taffrail. A strange, hot wind whipped around it, rippling the air and distorting the light so that despite its closeness to the ship, the demon was blurred. Looking directly at it made Sam dizzy.
At the edge of the ship's stern, Kameko relaxed the tension in her bowstring and let the bow clatter to the deck. Sam's heart skipped two painful beats. In less than those two heartbeats, Kameko drew steel in the shape of a four-pronged star from where it had been concealed in her waistband and threw it at the demon. The star-shaped dagger hurtled through the air in a streak of silver. Sam relaxed a fraction. Kameko was no Shadow Sister.
But though its aim was true, the dagger never struck its target. It hit an invisible barrier with a clang and bounced off, falling into the river below with a small splash.
There was a moment of stunned silence, and then the men at the stern of the ship shook off their inertia, unleashing a relentless barrage of arrows. At such close distance, it should have been impossible to miss. But every arrow bounced off that same invisible wall harmlessly.
"You're wasting ammunition," Braeden shouted, but either no one could hear him or they paid him no mind. Clearly frustrated, he grabbed Azi's wrist. "Tell your men to stop shooting!"
Azi glanced down at Braeden's hand on his sword arm and tugged. "Are you crazy? The second we let up, those nightmares will burn us all and the ship right along with it."
Braeden didn't let go. "Not with me on it, they won't."
Azi clenched his fist, the veins in his forearm rippling beneath Braeden's grip. "And if we were to give you over to them?" he asked dangerously. "Would they leave the rest of us alone?"
"You wouldn't!" Sam gasped, grasping onto Braeden by his tattered robes to tug him to her.
Azi met her stricken gaze without flinching. "I swore an oath to protect my liege. I will do my duty, no matter what the cost."
Braeden covered Sam's hand with his and gently pried her fingers loose. "If I believed giving them what they want would spare you, I'd volunteer myself. But I've been with the Shadow Sisters for weeks now, and they don't play by any rules but their own. The instant they no longer need you, they'll kill you. I burn the same as any man. They won't destroy this ship as long as I'm on it."
"The ship, you say," grounded out Azi. "What about my men?"
Braeden's jaw clenched and he looked away.
"Not good enough!" Azi snapped. "I won't sacrifice a hundred good men to save some half-man I hardly know."
"Shut up, both of you!" Sam growled. The day she needed to be the level-headed one was a dark day indeed.
The Lord Marshal glowered at her. "Stay out of this, Lady Samantha, unless you have a brilliant solution to this mess."
Sam drew her shoulders back and tried to copy her father's infamously haughty ducal stare. "As a matter of fact, I do. Tell your men to suck up their pride and go back below deck into the hull of the ship. The drakes can't destroy the hull without destroying the whole ship, right? So they'll be safe there as long as we can hold on to Braeden."
The three menâAzi, Braeden and the emperorâjust blinked at her. "That's..."
"Brilliant, I know," she said with a smug smile.
"Mad," said Azi.
"Stupid," said the emperor. "What's to stop them from snatching up Braeden as soon as we're out of their way?"
Sam lifted her chin higher. "Me," she said. "And Braeden. Together. We're a team."
"You're just a girl," the emperor said incredulously.
"What I am is rusty," said Sam, making a show of stretching her limbs and cracking her knuckles. "And a little bit crazy." She grinned at Braeden, who rolled his eyes at her. Her grin faded, and she gestured at the boy emperor. "Let me borrow your fancy sword, and I'll show you what just a girl can do."
Azi looked at her outstretched hand, and then turned to Braeden. "Can she fight?" he asked him.
"Not as well as me," said Braeden with an impish tilt to his lips, earning a baleful look from Sam, "But better than any other man I've ever fought."
"Except for Tristan," she grumbled.
"Except for Tristan," he agreed, earning him another glare. He didn't need to agree so quickly.
Azi watched his men send another volley of arrows toward the scarlet drake. This time, the demon breathed a puff of fire, disintegrating the arrows mid-flight. A man screamed and hurled himself over the ship's rails in a blazing ball of light. His body disintegrated to particles of dust before it hit the water. They didn't hear a splash.
"Mother of Light, save us," Azi muttered, bowing his head. Without lifting his head, he said, "I want you below deck, Highness. Take the guards with you."
"Butâ" whined the emperor.
"But nothing," Azi snapped. "You want to save lives, Highness? You won't do it by fighting. You'll do it by leading your men to safety. If you go, they'll follow."
The emperor nodded sullenly and pulled his sword free from his belt. He thrust the hilt-end at Sam with an irritated sniff. "You might as well take it. The one you've got isn't fit to butter my bread."
Sam didn't want to look a gift-horse in the mouth, so she simply murmured a quick thanks and secured the sword to her side. She hadn't even unsheathed it yet and already she could tell it was a fine blade, the pommel a little too ornate for her taste but perfectly serviceable. It felt right in her hands. She felt right.
"Go," Azi urged.
The emperor drew a gold chain with an ivory whistle from underneath his silk tunic and put it to his lips. The whistle blew, high and sharp. "Guards to me!" he cried, waving his hand high in the air as he started heading back to the hatch.
There was a moment of hesitation while the guards processed their new orders, and then they converged on the open hatch, following the emperor down the hatchway as quickly as they could, like frantic ants scurrying to the closest mound of dirt.
But not fast enough.
"Down!" Azi screamed.
Sam didn't think; she just acted, flinging herself flat against the deck. A blast of orange flame crackled in the space where she had been, close enough for the heat to sting but not enough to do real damage. Lying there, she heard a few men screamâterrible screams that went on and on and on. The screaming cut off. The stench of burnt meat filled her nostrils. All around her people were coughing, retching and moaning. The smoke was too thick to see much of anything, except for the main mast, which had gone up in flames and was now a towering pillar of fire.
Someone squeezed her ankle, and Sam nearly jumped out of her own skin. "Sam," rasped Braeden from somewhere behind her.
"I'm here," she rasped back, her throat raw and angry. "How do we kill those things, Braeden?"
"I have an idea," he said. "But I'll need you to watch my back."
In the smoke, her hand found his. "Always."
A/N: I'm alive! My terrible summer is over (colleague got back from maternity leave, which means I no longer have to work 80 hour work weeks...hooray!) I'm on vacation in 2 weeks which will mean LOTS of writing time, and I hope to get a head start on a whole bunch of updates so you don't end up waiting forever like this time. Adulting sucks.
Thank you guys SO much for sticking with this story despite all the stops and starts. I WILL finish it.
I'm a bit rusty, so as always open to your feedback and comments!