And so she leaned over the railing. Spat into the sea.
“Come for me, then, bitches.”
* * *
The storm met them four turns out.
Mia had been in her cabin when she first heard the cries from the crow’s nest, tossing in a fitful sleep and trying to turn her dreams as Bladesinger had said. She had the same two every nevernight—Aa and Niah wearing the faces of her parents, surrounded by their Four Daughters, arguing with each other beneath that endless sky. That scene would fade, and she’d wake to find Scaeva standing over her, knife in hand.
“Forgive me, child.”
And then she’d actually wake. Sweating and breathless. But this nevernight, before she’d felt his knife descend, a call had cut through her dreams, dragging her upward and into her cabin’s stubborn gloom. She’d rubbed the sleep from her eyes and frowned, thinking perhaps she’d imagined it. Until she heard the call again, the sound of bells—an alarm ringing across the Banshee’s deck.
She’d found Tric standing vigil outside her cabin as always. Together, they headed topside and found Sigursson on the aft. Black clouds had gathered at the edges of the ocean and were riding toward them like frothing horses, dragging a curtain across the sunslit skies behind. Sigursson had his spyglass up, lips parted as he watched the dark close in, faster than any storm had a right to. As he turned to Mia, she thought she caught a glimpse of worry in the piercing green of his eyes.
“Storm coming?” she asked.
“Aye,” he nodded.
“Bad?”
He looked back to the black horizon. Up to the sky above.
“… Aye.”
Her first mate had marched across the deck, barking orders with a voice like iron. Mia had watched her crew set to it, moving like mekwerk, only one or two baleful glances shot her way. The wind was in their faces now, pushing them away from Ashkah, the Banshee tacking back and forth across the gale and crawling toward their destination. She could hear curses and songs, the swell and crash of the rising seas against their hull, the wind wailing as the sky grew steadily darker. Lightning licked the distant horizon, blinding shears of pristine white against the veil of deepening black, the waters below them slowly deepening from azure to leaden gray as whitecap fangs gnawed at Banshee’s hull.
And with a clap of thunder, hard enough to shake Mia’s bones, the rain began.
It was bitter cold. Sharp as daggers on her skin. She pulled Valdyr’s greatcoat tighter about her shoulders, the shirt beneath soaking through. The wind slapped at her tricorn, whipped her hair about her face. Her dark eyes were fixed on the eastern horizon, willing her ship onward. Eclipse was in her shadow, eating her rising fear at the power gathering about them. A ragged cry went up from the crow’s nest above.
“’Byss and blood, look at that!”
Mia peered up to the lookout—saw he was pointing to the water beneath them. At first, she saw nothing save the gnashing swell, the ocean’s jaws. But then, under that rolling steel-gray, she caught sight of them. Shadows. Long and serpentine. Cutting swift just below the waterline, swarming about the Banshee’s belly. Black eyes and razor teeth and skin the color of old bones.
“WHITEDRAKES,” Tric said.
“Black Mother,” Mia whispered.
Dozens of them. Maybe hundreds. The biggest were thirty, perhaps forty feet in length. Each one a machine of muscle and sinew with a mouthful of swords. None were big enough to hurt the Banshee, of course, but Mia knew whitedrakes were rogue hunters who never moved in packs. And the sight of dozens of the bastards teeming in the water all about them was enough to send a slight vibration through every man on the deck. Mia could feel it, sure as she could feel the rain now falling on her skin, the wind in her dripping hair. A sliver of fear, piercing their sailor’s hearts. If the speed of the storm wasn’t enough, this was a sure sign that all about this journey wasn’t as it seemed. That they were all now part of something decidedly … unnatural.
Mia peered down into the swell. Across the water to the storm clouds rushing at them headlong. Every foe she’d faced on this road, every enemy, she’d met with a blade in her hand or a phial of poison in her palm. She’d killed men. Women. Senators and cardinals and gladiatii and Blades. Folk as