Four Roads Cross (Craft Sequence #5)(27)
“Send the letter over.”
Come on, she thought, give the cue. You’ve made your distraction; we can take it from here.
“Varg told me to deliver it in person.”
“She have anything else to say?”
“Just that.”
“You won’t set foot on this ship. Send the message over, if message you have.”
“Get your first mate down here so I can talk this out with him.”
Rustling on deck—sleeping sailors rising. Shit. They’d hoped to take the Dream without alarm, in case they had Craftsmen or other emergency precautions. Wake too many of the deck crew and there’d be no way to distract them all. Stop this now.
She triggered the Suit. Ice slammed through her veins, and a silverblack hand seized her heart. In a single pull she vaulted the rail, landed soundless on deck, choked out the first sentry in two heartbeats and the second sentry in two more. The rest of her team landed with a rainfall patter, and six Blacksuits stood aboard the Dream, unnoticed—at least, that was the plan.
“Blacksuits!” someone cried.
A man stood on the quarterdeck, pipe in hand, beside a canvas chair. She’d counted boots and hadn’t counted him, because he wasn’t walking. Stupid. Justice’s conclusions rushed back into her along the quicksilver link: Raz’s reluctance to give the signal, trying to attract the lookout’s—the first mate’s—attention. She didn’t swear, but wanted to.
Didn’t freeze, either. Cat sprinted to the stairs, leapt up, vaulted over, struck the man with the pipe so hard he spun first, then fell. She caught him before he hit the deck, not gently.
Too late, too late; her team charged the men at the port rail—five on eight, trivial for Blacksuits, but the sailors asleep on the forecastle were waking. They rolled to their feet and drew weapons whose edges wept with a sickening enchanted light.
Lee hit the inquisitive watchman first, and hard—threw him over the railing. He screamed when he fell, which didn’t help. Keep it quiet, thought all the Suits at once, as they took out the remaining sentries. But by this time the forecastle was awake, and cabin doors burst open, disgorging more of the Dream’s armed and angry crew.
Cat dived into battle. The man in the lead, a tall Iskari with thick braids and a curved cutlass, swung; she blocked his blade with her forearm and was not cut, but nevertheless it stung, and numbness took her arm. Not fast enough. She butted him in the face with her forehead, and he fell.
Another blade swept toward her. She dodged, dancing over the Iskari’s fallen body, but stumbled into a third sailor, who tried to grab her arm. He couldn’t hold her but slowed her down enough that the next cutlass almost caught her in the side. She swung the man who’d grabbed her around into the second sailor. He hit hard and let her go.
She fought through a mess of bodies and swinging blades that spread numbing haze where they cut. Grapnels arced from Bounty’s deck to the rails of Dream, and Raz’s people scuttled across like evil acrobats: skeletons and leeches, a snakeling corkscrewing along steel cable to wreathe a sentry in the cords of its armored body. Where Blacksuits struck, Varg’s sailors fell; Raz’s people joined the fray, tangling swords with their rib cages, forcing living sailors screaming to the deck. Raz leapt from ship to ship and laid about himself with cutlass and fierce fanged smile, dueling three sailors at once.
On the forecastle, a woman leveled a crossbow at his exposed back.
A year ago, Cat would have been submerged entirely in the Suit, barely conscious, her body a higher power’s puppet. No longer. She was herself enough to seize control.
The Suit said no. She was holding down half the forecastle by herself, pinballing from pirate to pirate; she risked letting them regroup, had to trust Raz to evade the shot, or the sailor to miss.
Cat said yes. She forced divinely wrought muscles to obey her, tore free of the scrum, and vaulted into the sailor’s line of fire. The quarrel crackled through the air, and Cat caught it in her hand.
Her skin burned even through the Suit. Lightning discharge blanked her. She slammed to deck planks, stunned. Saw Raz turn, shocked—then spin back around as a sword raked his side and blood stained his shirt. Cat, struggling to regain her feet, saw one of the sailors she had been fighting sprint toward the gong at the bow, grab its hammer, and strike.
The gong made no sound.
Nor did anything else. Silence covered the deck.
She tried to rise but could not. An enormous weight pressed her down; her Suit strained and surged, and with tremendous effort she forced herself to stand, every movement trembling at the max-rep edge of her enhanced strength. The gong’s silence pealed through her. Raz sunk to one knee. Blacksuits and sailors and skeletons alike lay prone.
The captain’s cabin opened, and a figure of knives and wheels emerged. Clawed feet cut into deck wood, and the lenses within its eyes slipped from point to point of focus. Scalpels unfolded from its fingers, and springs turned wheels within the hollow of its chest.
Golem, Cat thought, though she had never seen a golem like this before—a mouthless work of art, moving delicately despite this weight that pressed upon them all. Maybe it was immune, or so strong it did not feel the pressure. It approached Raz and bent over him. Scalpels clicked into place. Its head turned sideways, considering how best to cut. Internal mechanisms ticked through the artificial quiet, as if she held a watch to her ear. The ships’ lanterns glinted off its blades as they slid, so gently, along Raz’s jaw.