Hush (Dragon Apocalypse) (25 page)

“Sage said to let you know it was time,” shouted Jetsam.

“Thank you,” Gale shouted. She looked Purity in the eyes. “You’re a very lucky woman. I’m eager to get back to the material world, so, as tempting as it might be, I’m not going to keelhaul you. As for your fantasies of killing the sun, I think it’s best we end this now. I’m tossing both your sword and the Jagged Heart overboard before we leave the Sea of Wine. They’ll be lost forever.”

“No way!” said Infidel. “The Jagged Heart has to go back to Qikiqtabruk. I’ve made a vow!”

“On this ship, I’m the final judge and authority,” said Gale. “Consider yourself released from your vow. The harpoon goes overboard.”

Infidel protested, “But Aurora –”

“– wasn’t insane,” I said, putting my hand on Infidel’s shoulder. “Do you really think if she knew what Purity planned to do with the harpoon, she’d handle things any differently?”

“Stagger!” said Infidel. “I’m doing this for you! You’re the one who made the promise to Aurora!”

“She was dying.” I shrugged. “Was I supposed to say no?”

“So your vow to her was only a convenient lie?”

I crossed my arms. “There’s a difference between lying and changing your mind as new information becomes available.”

“What of our wedding vows? Can they also be tossed aside as new information becomes available?”

“What?” I asked, feeling dizzy. How had she made the leap to this?

Captain Romer, sensibly, had no patience for our little spat.

“Mako, meet me on the deck with the harpoon.”

Infidel placed herself in front of the stairs. “No one is leaving until I’ve had my say.” The hair around her face began to flutter, as if in a strong breeze.

“We know what you have to say,” said Gale. “I admire your sense of devotion, but you cannot prevail.”

“Anyone who... anyone who tries... tries to get past this door... will find out... how much I... can prevail.” Infidel sounded winded. She looked confused. Suddenly, the Gloryhammer slipped from her grasp and her eyes rolled up into her head. I leapt forward, catching her before she hit the floor.

“What just happened?” I asked.

“I blocked the air from flowing back into her lungs, causing her to faint,” said Gale. “She’ll be good as new in a minute or so.”

Mako slipped past both of us and headed down the hall.

Gale turned to Sorrow. “Is the sword safe to carry?”

“For you? I don’t think it’s a problem. You obviously have a robust soul. I think Purity can only flow into bodies when the host’s soul is weak or absent. That’s why her army seems so lifeless. She gathered other women with damaged souls to use in case her current body is compromised.”

“She might be able to jump into a body even if the sword doesn’t touch it,” I said. “The sword was knocked from her grasp by Brand earlier. It fell a few feet away but didn’t break the link.”

“It didn’t quite touch her now,” said Sorrow. “Fortunately, all her soulless spares are shackled. There’s no one she can jump to, even if she can travel more than a few feet from the blade.”

Purity listened to all this talk with a blank expression. If her ghost remained inside this body, she wasn’t wasting any energy on manipulating the face. Sorrow retrieved the Ice-Moon Blade carefully and handed it to Gale. They both held their breath for a second, then Gale smiled. “I’m still me.”

She left the hold, climbing to the deck. I followed, carrying Infidel in my arms. As we emerged into the permanent sunset, her eyes fluttered open.

“What happened?” she asked weakly.

I paused as I looked down at her face. I didn’t want to lie to her. But, if I told the truth, she’d be back on her feet, fighting to stop Gale. “You fainted,” I said, which was at least partly true.

“I don’t remember... were we arguing?” She lifted her fingers to the knot on the side of her head and winced.

“You’ve just overexerted yourself,” I said, sitting her down beside the door to the forecastle. Menagerie flapped over to us and sat beside her, a concerned look in his hound dog eyes.

“I had trouble breathing?” she said, half statement, half question. “I’ve never fainted before.”

I was glad that my coconut face and paper voice lacked expression. Otherwise, she would have readily sensed how troubled I was as I said, “It was stuffy in the hold. You’ve not had much to eat since you got injured. You’re breathing for two now. You need to take it easy. When we get back home, our first priority is going to be to find someplace where you can live in peace and quiet.”

She sighed. “Peace and quiet. It’s going to be...”

“Boring?” I asked.

“A nice change,” she said, scratching Menagerie on the back of his neck, where fur and feathers intermingled. “I swear, I really don’t wake up in the mornings thinking, ‘Boy, I can’t wait to fight a dragon today!’”

I laughed, or tried to. She smiled.

Then Mako came onto the deck with the Jagged Heart, still wrapped in its frost-covered sail.

Infidel’s whole body went stiff as Mako met his mother at the starboard rail. “What are they – ?”

“This is for the best,” I said, placing my root-hand against her shoulder, pinning her against the boards. “Aurora would understand.”

“You son of a bitch,” Infidel growled, as her eyes flashed to anger. She thrust her arm toward the Jagged Heart, and shouted, “Fetch!”

Menagerie shot forward like he’d been sitting on a spring just as Mako flipped the sail over the edge, letting it unfurl, sending the harpoon toward the Sea of Wine. Menagerie’s ever changing form shifted, his mouth and wings growing bigger, his body smaller and more streamlined as he flapped to full speed. Gale tossed the sword overboard just as Menagerie’s jaws clamped onto the shaft of the harpoon. The weight of the harpoon proved too great for his pelican wings and he dropped like a stone, vanishing from my sight over the rail as the sword, too, disappeared.

I stood, spinning from Infidel, suddenly wishing we’d made more of an effort to find out how far Purity’s soul could travel from the sword. Because, whatever faint intelligence might yet linger in Menagerie, there was also the very real possibility that he was a body without a soul.

From off the starboard rail came the laughter of a woman, as the bloody sky above us began to snow.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

LAST, BEST HOPE

W
ITH A FLAPPING
sound like the world’s largest swan taking to air, an angel rose next to the
Freewind
. I use the term
angel
only because that’s what springs to mind when one is confronted with a human body held aloft on giant feathered wings. Of course, calling the body human was stretching things a bit. The thing that flew above our ship was shaped like a woman, slender and well-muscled, but the limbs and torso were covered in black and tan fur similar to a hound. The woman’s hair was a mass of long platinum curls and as the breeze pushed the hair from her face I was shocked to find that her visage bore a striking resemblance to my wife. Menagerie had some of Infidel’s blood in him after all.

In the creature’s left hand was the Jagged Heart. In the right was the Ice-Moon Blade. The blended thing before us bent back her head and laughed as she flapped to the level of the crow’s-nest.

“What a marvelous shell!” she said, growing an extra set of arms from beneath her first two as she spoke. “It’s as malleable as false matter!” The black and tan fur rippled as it changed to a downy white. The enormous pelican wings were mostly white save for their black tips, but even these faded to the color of new fallen snow. Purity’s pale eyes glowed red with the reflected light of the omnidirectional sunset as she stared down at Gale and Mako.

“I’m almost grateful enough for this protean gift that I’m tempted to let you live,” she laughed. “Almost.”

She extended the Jagged Heart toward Captain Romer. I turned, intending to grab Infidel and carry her to safety since the Gloryhammer was downstairs in the hold, but she was gone. In the passageway beneath me I heard running footsteps.

The deck above the main hold splintered as Infidel exploded into the air, flashing toward Purity faster than I could follow. She slammed the head of the Gloryhammer into the woman’s jaw with a fury that made me wince. Purity’s head snapped backward, tearing at the throat, nearly decapitated by the blow. Infidel’s momentum carried her skyward, leaving Purity dangling in mid-air for the microseconds it would take for her wings to realize they were dead.

Only the wings kept flapping. Even as Purity’s head continued to tear from its shoulders, a new head grew in its place. Menagerie had been able to change shapes too swiftly for the eye to follow. Purity had inherited his speed.

“That was unpleasant,” Purity’s new head grumbled as her old head dropped toward the Sea of Wine. High above, Infidel had managed to halt her upward course and was now turning back down for another pass.

If Purity had delayed even a tenth of a second, Infidel might have stopped her. As it was, the four-armed witch waved the Ice-Moon Blade toward the mainmast of the
Freewind
and suddenly there was a full scale iceberg looming above us, the mast caught within its core. Every timber shuddered as the boat began to tilt toward starboard.

Then, with Infidel barely a hundred feet away, Purity swept the Jagged Heart across the sky, cutting open a rip in reality. A black night glittering with stars showed through the gash. Purity flapped her wings to race into this new sky just as Infidel passed through the space where she’d dangled an instant before. Infidel swung her feet down, trying to slow her descent, but by her speed I guessed she was about to smash straight through the deck. Yet before she hit, every rope in sight rose to catch her, forming an impromptu net. She punched through the deck despite this, but it sounded as if she came to a crashing halt below without breaking through the hull.

Not that it much mattered.

The iceberg around the mast weighed at least as much as the ship. The
Freewind
turned completely on its side as the iceberg crashed into the waves of wine. Everyone on deck was thrown toward the sea.

The last thing I noticed, as I tumbled toward the wine, was that the flies had caught up to us once more. I hit the rail with a jolt that flipped me roots over nuts, and the world went dark. An instant later I was submerged, unable to see. Ropes tangled about me, halting my further descent. For a panicked moment I struggled, certain I would drown, before the fluid washing about within my barrel chest reminded me that I had no lungs.

Calming myself, I searched the darkness for the red glow of the endless sunset. Instead, everything was black as pitch in all directions. Then, in the distance, I saw a light flicker to life. I turned toward it, and saw that it was a lantern held by a red-haired girl who was standing on the main mast at a 90 degree angle, walking along it like a spider. Cinnamon?

I pushed my head above the surface and the puzzle pieces slipped into place. It wasn’t Cinnamon who was sideways, it was the ship. The
Freewind
was on its side, the masts parallel with the water. And, judging from its grayish hue, this was indeed water. We were no longer in the Sea of Wine. Captain Romer must have triggered our journey back.

I tried to call out to Cinnamon, but my waterlogged tongue failed to produce even a squeak. Not that my ordinarily faint voice was likely to have been heard over the noise all around. It sounded as if there was a waterfall not ten feet behind me, and every timber of the ship was groaning. Add the pops and cracks coming from the sizeable iceberg that loomed in the darkness, plus the general lapping of waves, and it’s a wonder that I was able to hear Mako call out, “We’re taking in water! Get the main hatch closed!”

I spun around and found the source of the waterfall. The main hatch was indeed open, and given the perpendicular orientation of the deck, the bottom edge of the gaping hole was a good foot below the waves, sinking deeper by the second. Ordinarily, the double hatch doors lay flat against the deck when open, one toward starboard, one toward port. The port door was the half above water. Jetsam appeared from nowhere, swimming through the air with graceful kicks. He released the pin that secured the hatch door to the deck and darted aside as the giant door swung under its own weight to crash shut. Unfortunately, this did nothing to ease the immediate crisis; the starboard half of the hatch was the part taking on water, and the door was beneath the waves.

I let the current carry me to the edge of the hatch, catching myself before I was pulled into the hold. With my wooden fingers stiff and waterlogged, I groped for the outer edges of the door beneath me. I found them, but the wood wouldn’t budge; it was no doubt secured by a pin.

Mako appeared in the water beside me, gasping for air. He’d obviously been beneath the water, trying to move the door. “I can’t see the damn pin!” he shouted. “Get the lantern closer, Cinnamon!”

Cinnamon turned from studying the ice-bound upper half of the mast and ran along the thick wooden beam with confidence. A rope swung out as she jumped. She landed at a crouch on the looped rope, dangling the lantern down until the base skimmed the waves. The water glowed, pale and ghostly.