Stormbreak (Seafire #3) - Natalie C. Parker Page 0,32

within the stairwell.

Hime had come to stand at the rail. She’d bound her hair back in a single blue ribbon, exposing the old scar along her jaw, and she stood with her eyes pinned to the dark. She hadn’t signed a word to Caledonia, but they’d sailed together long enough to know what was at stake here.

“Captain.” Pisces’s voice was a reluctant note. The time had come. Amina had not.

Caledonia nodded and raised her voice past a pain she feared had become a permanent fixture in her chest. “Let’s go!”

As the ship rumbled to life and shoved off, Caledonia kept her eyes on her friend. She would never forget the way Hime watched the stairwell until the very last second, the way her hands clutched the rail as though hope had turned her fingers to stone. And she would certainly never forget the expression of exquisite bravery as Hime finally turned away, her chin held high and her black eyes shining in the pale blue light.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

They sailed smoothly between the high walls of the canals. Once, these waters had seemed as chaotic and impenetrable as Cloudbreak’s twisting pathways. Now they were as familiar as the workings of this ship.

Joining Nettle on the bridge, Caledonia trained her eyes on the channels that opened and closed before them. The Luminous Wake was broad where their first ship, the Mors Navis, had been sleek, which limited the paths they could take, but not so much that Caledonia had considered adopting another ship. They could have chosen from the many that had arrived in the hands of Bullets or those few sent from Hime’s people in the Drowning Lands, one more similar in heft and speed to the Mors Navis, but after having sailed into battle aboard this old sweeper, Caledonia wasn’t ready to trust another.

“Slow and steady,” she reminded Nettle. Needlessly. The girl was as skilled at the helm as Caledonia had been at her age. Possibly better. But in the dark, it was difficult to tell stone from water. If they weren’t careful, they’d gouge their belly or crush their nose.

“Captain.” Oran appeared in the doorway, one hand pressed to the frame. “I think we have a problem.” He turned to look over his shoulder, the strong line of his neck glistening with sweat.

“You think?” she asked. “Or you know?”

He turned his eyes back to her, a quiet frown pulling his brows together. “I don’t think we’re alone out here.”

No friendly ships would be sailing these canals; it was against protocol. A few yards ahead, the channel forked in two directions. The left offered them the shortest route to the western seas. But as it was the fastest way out, it was also the fastest way in.

“Nettle, change course. Go north at the fork, not west.”

“Yes, Captain.”

As they neared the fork, a growling sound joined the low rumble of their own thrusters. Nettle cursed and Oran raced onto the forward deck. The northern channel was longer, less accessible from the outside, but that didn’t mean a ship couldn’t worm its way through.

The sound could be coming from either, and Caledonia couldn’t tell the difference.

“Which one, Oran?” Caledonia called.

Nettle pulled the ship out of speed. The approaching engines grew louder, echoing off the tall walls.

Oran shook his head in frustration. “I can’t tell!”

Caledonia left the bridge and raced along the nose to study the eddies in the water. An approaching ship would stir the current. Maybe not much, but enough for Caledonia to decipher which side of the fork they were coming down and choose the other path.

“Pine!” she called over her shoulder. “I need gunners on the forward deck!”

The orders echoed behind her and still she studied the dark waters where they rushed out of the two channels, neither of which looked any different from the other.

“Both!” Oran shouted, coming instantly to her side. “Captain, they’re coming down both channels.”

For a swift and terrible second, the meaning of that sentence left Caledonia speechless. There was more than one ship. Her only way forward was blocked by incoming vessels and the Luminous Wake was far too large to turn around.

Caledonia could call the ship to a halt and they could brace for impact, but even if she succeeded in subduing the incoming ships, she would still be trapped in these canals. And that, she realized, was exactly the point. To rush her into picking one direction where she would be forced to fight head on while the other ship swept around to