screaming at the top of her lungs over the deafening wind. “Are we going to die?”
“Not if I have anything to say about it! We’ve got a full belly keeping us steady, our storm sails up, and the best salts this side of the Thousand Towers!” Corleone flashed a wink. “Besides, I might feel compelled to tell you my real name if we were about to die!”
“Is it Gherardino?” she managed to shout. “Or Gualtieri?”
“What happened to the B names?”
“Aha!” she roared. “So it does start with a B!”
He grinned and shook his head. “I have a confession to make!”
“So we are going to die?”
“The reason I didn’t want to stop for those Luminatii! They were looking for you and your brother, but I thought they might be after what the Maid’s got in her belly!”
“… And what might that be?”
“About twenty tons of arkemist’s salt!”*
Mia’s eyes bulged in their sockets. “What?”
“Aye,” Corleone nodded.
“You’re saying we’re sailing with twenty tons of high explosive beneath us?”
“Well…” Cloud gave a small shrug. “Probably closer to twenty-one!”
“In the middle of a lightning storm?”
“Thrilling, neh?” Corleone laughed aloud. “Fear not, it’s well stowed. The hull would have to be split apart for the lightning to touch it, and no storm is that fierce!”
“I thought only Iron Collegium brokers were allowed to freight that crap?”
Cloud looked at her a long moment. “You do realize I’m a pirate, don’t you?”
He tossed the sodden feather from his eyes and grinned like a madman, seemingly fearless despite the power on display about him. Watching the lightning illuminate the gleam in this man’s eyes, Mia knew why his men followed him. Seeing him laugh at the bedlam all around them, the danger beneath them, hands steady on the wheel, she couldn’t help but stand a little taller despite it all.
“Get back below, Dona Mia!” he shouted. “Let me and my crew handle this. You go comfort that blond screamer of yours!”
“… You heard us?”
“Four fucking Daughters, I’d have to be deaf or dead not to have heard you!” he cried. “And bravo, by the way. Quite a performance.”
Mia could feel her cheeks burning under the storm’s chill.
“Don’t fret,” he shouted. “Lad or lass, who you roll on my ship is your business. I give no fucks for who you fuck. But if you ever need company…”
Mia found herself grinning despite her fear. “Go fuck yourself!”
“Well, thanks to this storm, the good news is that’s no longer my only option!”
Buoyed up by Cloud’s confidence, Mia decided to get the ’byss out of his way. She made her way carefully down to the quarterdeck, squinting in the rain, knuckles white on the railing. The ship was swept and rocked, and Mia stumbled twice, almost falling, her heart hammering as she peered over the side into the teeth of the sea. She looked up at the men still wrestling with the loose sail on the mast above. Wondering why anyone under the suns would want to be a sailor.
And then she saw him.
He was just a silhouette against the ocean’s steel gray, up past the forecastle. Almost lost under the spray as they crashed bow-first into another trough. He was stood in the bow, arms spread wide, head thrown back, long saltlocks sodden with sea.
“Tric?” she breathed.
Another wave crashed over the bow, tons of freezing seawater running down the deck and over the sides, but there he stood despite it all. Like a rock in the middle of the chaos. He was too far away for her to call, the rest of the crew seemed too intent on managing the storm to heed any lesser concerns. Mia began making her way up the deck, clinging to the railing for dear life as another wave crashed up over the deck. BigJon saw her, shouted a warning, but she ignored the man. Clawing her way on with freezing hands, her nails turning blue, her skin turning white, past the main and foremasts until she was close enough to shout.
“What the ’byss are you doing?” she cried.
He turned his head slightly, then back toward the sea, arms wide. The sleeves of his sodden robe had bunched up as he’d raised his hands, and Mia could see those strange black spatter stains, drenching him from fingers to elbows.
“PRAYING!”
“To who?” she yelled. “For what?”
“TO THE MOTHER! ASKING HER TO QUIET THE LADIES OF OCEANS AND STORMS!”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“THIS IS NO ORDINARY TEMPEST!” he cried. “THIS IS THE ANGER OF THE GODDESSES! THEY SENSE