Chapter Four: Fog and Iron

The cannon woke me before the pain did.

A boom split the Wraith and glued her back together wrong. She heeled hard hammocks spat bodies like seeds. I hit the planks hip-first, then head; white flashed behind my eyes, and my breath bolted like a spooked horse.

“Up! Up! Up!” Harp roared. “Hands to quarters!”

I clawed air back into my lungs and lurched for the ladder. Fog poured down the hatch like wool. The crisp morning had gone to ground; this dawn was muffled and hungry.

On deck, the world was grey and close. The bell clanged the alarm; another cannon replied from too near. Grapnels sang, their hooks bit our rails with cheerful cruelty. A black-beaked hull loomed and vanished in swallows of fog; its oars whispered like conspirators.

“Boarders!” Jas bellowed. “Make her ugly!”

“Chain to windward,” Kade’s voice cut through, low and exact, the kind of sound men obey without thinking. “Gunners, knees. Harp, repel. Keep our decks ours.”

I ran for my station, the cut opening on my brow turning the fog pink at the edges. A boot slammed my shoulder; I pinwheeled, skull ringing, and went down on hands that weren’t ready. A stranger’s weight stepped on my spine to climb aboard my ship.

“Move!” he snarled.

I rolled, let him miss my kidney with his heel by a breath, found my feet by swearing at them, and got steel in my hand. The first boarder that reached me had eyes like chipped slate and a hook where his manners should’ve been; I drove my sword up under his arm where armor forgets to exist, and his breath left him surprised and red.

They poured over our rail like a flood down stairs. Steel spoke. Wood answered. Harp’s marlinspike cracked a wrist; Jas’s cutlass lit the fog with bright, mean arcs. Kade moved through the mess like the rumour he had been made into quiet, ruthless, everywhere and nowhere, his growl rolling under orders whenever something refused to obey the plan.

“Rye!” Jas threw from somewhere to starboard. “Port sheet, lock it or kiss the yard goodbye!”

I sprang, hands slippery with fog, burned my palms anyway, choked the knot home clean. Good. One thing right. Then the enemy’s bowsprit kissed our rail, and the flood became a press.

A man with roots tattooed up his cheek met my blade. He hit like a bellringer. The first blow rattled my knuckles; the second shocked my shoulder; the third sang up my arms until pain wrote its name down my bones. I held. Barely. He grinned, enjoying the way my guard trembled, and stepped in to finish me.

I didn’t yield ground. I changed it. Dropped his cut hissed where my head had been and bit mast. Up, I jabbed, low and quick; his thigh answered with blood and a snarl. His return swing came down vicious; I braced, too slow, too weak, and caught most of it anyway. Fire lanced my wrists.

A hand clamped my forearm hard, precise, exactly enough and yanked me out of the second strike’s arc. Kade. He didn’t look at me. “Move,” he said, which was infuriating because I was, and then he was gone, cutting the man who’d been writing my ending.

We were losing the middle. More boots than we wanted hammered our deck; our carronades were too close to be courteous; knives are romantic and slow. The fog turned everything intimate and wrong.

Use the ship, Riley.

I looked up. The mainsail boom sat tamed by its preventer, docile as a leashed dog. Unleashed, it would scythe across the deck like judgment.

I didn’t ask. I didn’t point. I ran.

A blade kissed my sleeve on the way, took a thread of hair and pride with it. I slid under a swing, shouldered a man aside, and reached the preventer. Knife out. One, two, three cuts. The line parted with a sound like a lie giving way.

“Duck!” I screamed, voice ripping my throat.

Our men dropped. Harp folding like a felled oak, Jas flattening with a grin I felt rather than saw. The boom swung free with the joy of something made to move. It scythed the fog and turned men into problems. Three boarders rode it into the rail and over with surprised curses. Two more took it at the shoulders and spun, boneless, into mist. One ducked late; his jaw met oak; his jaw lost.

The boom hit its arc, bounced once, hungry for seconds. I caught the sheet, threw my weight, felt my shoulders scream, and bullied it into sulk. Harp’s hands slammed tackle into sense beside mine. The deck shuddered. The press loosened.

“Push them,” Kade said, not loud, and the word became weather. We did. Steel and fist and spike and belaying pin. Our deck became ours again, inch by inch, blood by breath.

A knife-bright boarder with eyes too pleased came for me twin-bladed. His first slash kissed skin through my sleeve and wrote sting along my arm. His second I caught on my edge and held until my wrists begged and my elbows cursed me. He laughed. Why do they always laugh? and lunged to end it.

I jammed a belaying pin into his ribs hard enough to make his heart think about pausing, then finished what he’d started poorly. He folded into the deck’s indifferent embrace.

Chainshot coughed from our port carronade, chewing their oars to driftwood. Their hull spun, fog stunned. Grapnels went back to the sea with a splash that sounded like relief.

“Cast off!” Jas roared. “Hooks home, now!”

Lines hacked. Iron fell. The last bite between our ships let go with a sulky clank. Their captain howled a promise I didn’t plan to let him keep, and then they were only a smear in wet white.

Silence arrived ugly, breath and blood and the counting of fingers. The cut on my brow peacocked down my cheek. My arms shook so hard my sword chimed against my knee.

Kade found me with his eyes first. Then his boots. He took in the frayed preventer, the boom lashed tame again, the bodies it had made into quiet.

“Who cut my preventer,” he said sharply.

“I did,” I said, because truth sits cleaner than fear. “I shouted.”

“You did,” he allowed, and one corner of his mouth thought about smiling. “Next time, shout sooner.”

“I’ll start the night before,” I managed.

Jas thumped my shoulder hard enough to jar my teeth. “You’re going to be the death of me, Sprat.”

“Get in line,” Harp rumbled, wiping his spike. He glanced at the boom, then at me. “Not today.”

Berrit shoved a rag at my face. “Bleed in a bucket,” he scolded. “Deck’s had enough.”

Dr. Luth appeared, expression like a man judging soup. “Peacock,” he said of my brow. “Loud, mostly feathers. Sit.” He wrapped me in something that stank of roses and worked like a threat.

Kade’s growl rolled in his chest when Old Noll muttered about the wind veering again. The sound settled along my spine and made my heart shudder, not from fear. From recognition. A thing sharp and true.

“Set a course,” he said, voice back to calm. “We won’t be here when they find their oars.”

We moved. Lines kissed cleats. Sails took breath. Fog peeled, reluctant. I stood amid the quiet after and felt two things I hadn’t expected to survive the morning: my legs and the thread of belonging tugging once, then again.

Yesterday, I’d almost been thrown overboard by talk. Today, I’d nearly thrown men overboard with a boom I wasn’t supposed to touch. Tomorrow, I told the rope still looped around my palm, you move faster. You hold cleaner. You become necessary.

“Back to work,” Harp grunted.

“Yes,” I said, and did.