Smoke and Iron (The Great Library #4)(22)

She rolled away, praying she had time and Thomas had been precise in his mixtures. She was only a few feet away when she felt the shudder of the explosion through the metal, and a brilliant bright red jet of fire burst out from the door to cook the falling rain into a puff of steam.

Khalila scrambled up, staggered as the ship lurched again, and almost fell into the guide rope. She slipped and clung for her life. The winds were so strong that they pummeled like lead fists, and she couldn’t pull in breath against the full force of the blast. Bright sparks swam in her vision, and she prayed for another burst of lightning; there was nothing to see now but darkness and flying rain.

And then she saw the glow from the bridge above. Couldn’t make out anything within it, only the indistinct light. She was halfway to the starboard side. Halfway to the other set of stairs.

She fought her way against the wind until she fell across another obstacle in her way. A dead man. A sailor, by Allah’s mercy, not one of her friends. She climbed over him and realized that she’d found the stairs. She pulled her sword free and scrambled up.

The opening at the top was a melted mess of metal and still-bubbling Greek fire, though someone—likely Thomas—had thrown down a counteragent to prevent the stuff from eating through the hull of the ship and sinking them all. She jumped over the flickering green flames and into the bridge . . . into the middle of a standoff.

Anit looked like a delicate toy in Thomas’s hands, and Thomas . . . well, he looked dangerous, and so did the blade he held to the girl’s throat. There were two of the bridge crew down, wounded or dead; the remaining, save the helmsman, who’d stayed at his post, were backed up to the sealed port exit. Through luck or design, none of them had High Garda guns, which could have ended this very badly.

Khalila stopped where she was, sword at the ready and breathing hard. Santi’s focus didn’t move from the captain, though Dario’s did, in a flicker, to sweep her for injuries. He must have been satisfied she was all right, since he didn’t move toward her.

She felt weak now, and the cold had set deep. Rain coursed down her face from her soaked hijab.

But she held firm as Captain Santi said, “Surrender or we kill the girl, and probably all of you. You know we can do it.”

One of them laughed.

There was a loud puff of air, and a red-hot rivet appeared in the steel beside the man’s head. Anit glanced over. Glain, it seemed, had found the connection for the steam hose below, and she seemed very content to try her aim again on the next one to doubt their sincerity.

No one laughed again.

The ship’s captain, a burly, scarred man who had survived far worse than this, finally said, “All right. Maybe you could kill us. But you need us if you want to sail this ship and survive the next five minutes, and you know that.”

“And just where do you plan to sail it after you let Red Ibrahim’s daughter be killed under your command?” Santi asked. He seemed cool and calm and utterly in charge. “Alexandria? Her father doesn’t sound the type to let you explain what happened. From what I’ve heard, he’s the type happy to take your tongue out first.”

“With all of you dead, he’ll only hear one side: ours. She’s all you’ve got, you fool, and the numbers are on our side. Your only choice is to give up.”

“It’s not,” Santi said. Khalila knew that tone, light and careless. This was Santi at his most dangerous. He lifted a half-full bottle of green liquid—the leftover Greek fire. He pulled the stopper. “If I pour, it eats straight down, through every layer of the ship, until it bores through the bottom. Won’t take long. And my friend Thomas has the only countermeasure. Do you think you can take it from him in time?”

The sailors froze, and everyone looked to the captain, who struggled to seem unimpressed. “You’d go down with us.”

“It’s better than what waits for us with the Archivist,” Santi said. “Agreed, my friends?”

“Agreed,” Thomas said, in a voice pitched so low it was like an earthquake.

“Agreed,” Dario said.

“Of course.” Glain.

“Yes,” Khalila said, last of all. “We’re not afraid of death. If we were, we would never have begun this.”

“Stop,” Anit said sharply. Not to them. To her captain. “They mean it. They’ll send us all down together. Give up.”

“Your father—”

“I will deal with my father. This is on my head. I command you to obey!”

Whether it was Anit’s direct order or the threat of Santi and that jug, the captain hesitated only a moment before he nodded and ordered his men to their knees, hands on their heads. He joined them. The helmsman hadn’t released the wheel; he couldn’t, Khalila realized. He’d been tied to it, to avoid being tossed away in a sudden lurch.

“Change course,” Thomas said to the helmsman. “We head for Cadiz.”

The man murmured under his breath as he spun the wheel. “I’ll need the exact heading,” he said. “From the charts.”

Santi stoppered the Greek fire, handed it to Glain, and pulled a chart from the rack at the rear of the room. He unrolled it on the table and read off coordinates. The helmsman’s face was not made for deception, Khalila thought, and she glided up behind him and put a knife to his throat. “Put us off course, and I’ll kill you,” she said very quietly, just for him. “I know you’re thinking of it. Don’t. You can all live through this. Anit will take the blame, and none of you will be punished. Do you believe me?”