Fiery Edge of Steel (A NOON ONYX NOVEL) (30 page)

I ran up the stairs to the sundeck, pulling Rafe with me, worried that we’d already wasted too much time below.

Emerging onto
Cnawlece
’s upper deck was like coming up out of a cave into the middle of an active battlefield. Although Russ and Burr’s efforts had managed to slow
Cnawlece
, we were now close enough to see the gaping hole of water we were headed for. The spray was relentless. Standing on deck was almost like standing under a waterfall. Fara was manning the cannons and Ari was throwing fireballs. In the time it took me to reach him, he threw three separate blasts, which killed two wraiths and mortally wounded another. Still, they kept coming. I saw immediately that our priority was keeping them off the boat. If anyone had ever questioned whether feeding Virtus all those pounds of fish had been worth it, they now had their answer. He paced the edges of the deck, snarling and spitting at any wraith that got too close. This was how Ari knew who to fire at next.

I turned to Rafe.

“Fine,” I said, more to myself than him.
Make me more deadly.
“I want you to cast them all over me: Painfall, Damage Cascade, and Hemorrhage. Then you and Fara work on trying to cast Impenetrable over as much of
Cnawlece
as you can.” Maybe if we held out until dawn, we’d make it. I tried not to think about the fact that dawn was seven hours away.

If Rafe had any reaction to my request, he kept it to himself. He locked his hands together and then beneath his breath, he calmly murmured a series of words. One by one, I felt the spells settle into place. My signature suddenly felt longer, stronger, and slicker, like I was wielding a flaming scorpion tail whip. The next time Virtus snarled at one of the wraiths, I ran over to him.

There it was.
In the water, not three yards from us.

I shaped my magic into a fiery sling and then used it to whip a fireball directly into the wraith’s chest. I didn’t know how Rafe’s spells would work and I didn’t want to take any chances so I’d thrown my magic hard and fast. The effect was more than enough. More than I wanted to witness. The wraith burst into flames, shrieking, and then collapsed into a liquefied puddle of demon stew. On deck, Fara shuddered and reached for her Book. She knelt down with Rafe and together they tried to cast Impenetrable over all of
Cnawlece
.

It didn’t work. The wraiths started throwing fireballs that looked like radioactive will-o’-the-wisp. Some of them reached the deck. Fara screamed and I turned from my disgusting wraith blasting to put the fires out. After the smoke cleared, I saw Fara lying on the ground next to Rafe. He had her head in his lap and was stroking her hair, murmuring something to her. I ran over to them.

Fara was horribly burned. Over much of her body. In fact, it was hard to imagine she’d gotten this injured from the hot, but brief, fires I’d just put out. And that’s when I realized it wasn’t recent burns I was looking at. As I’d predicted earlier, things had finally become so dire that Fara had been forced to drop her glamour.
This
was the real Fara. At some point in the past, Fara Vanderlin had been consumed by fire and then had been unable to heal herself or reach a Mederi.

I’d utterly and thoroughly misjudged her. My guess was Fara’s glamour kept more than emotional scars at bay. Looking at her writhing in pain now, I could only imagine that her daily glamour also helped her deal with some lingering physical pain as well.

I looked at Rafe, grievously ashamed of all the times I’d accused Fara of being fake.

“She’ll be okay,” he said. “Her
potentia
’s gone, but Impenetrable is up, at least for now.” He pointed toward the sky. Two iridescent green glowballs exploded in midair. The sparks rained down over our heads but then fell to
Cnawlece
’s side, like they’d hit a great big clear umbrella. I seized the moment, clutching at this tiny sliver of hope, only to have it shatter in the next second.

Cnawlece
lurched forward from the position we’d been holding and started drifting toward the bend again.

“The engine just failed,” Rafe said. But he didn’t move. Just sat there, still cradling Fara’s head in his lap. “You should find Ari.” His tone was entirely too fatalistic for me. I remembered Fara’s battlefield blessing from dinner. How fitting it had turned out to be.

Only one thing left to do, tell my friends—that’s you! All you meant and more . . .

Well, I wasn’t ready to say good-bye just yet.

“Lower the anchor!” I yelled, jumping up.
What had the
Field Guide
said? Something about an anchor being the only way to escape Ebony’s
End?

I ran to Ari, who was covered in salt. He looked miserable. His eyes were more sunken than before and his skin was greasy and pale. He shook and was so out of breath, he could barely speak. I should have been doing more to help him.

“The engine just slipped and we’re drifting toward the hole again,” I told him. “I’m going to drop the anchor.”

He nodded and followed me over to it. After a moment or two of struggling, we finally unhooked it. It fell into the water with a great big splash and I heard the gratifying sound of the chain clanking as the anchor dropped lower and lower into the water. A moment later, the clanking stopped. There was no more chain. The anchor had been lowered, but we were still drifting . . .

The
Field Guide
had been wrong.

Luck must want us to die,
I thought. There could be no other explanation. The water here was too deep to anchor in and now, suddenly, after hitting rock after rock, we seemed to have passed all the snags.

“Time to abandon ship,” I said to Ari. “At least in the dinghy we can row.”

It was madness. Pure folly. Abandoning
Cnawlece
meant a slow death instead of a fast one. If we didn’t die at the hands of the wraiths tonight, we would die at the hands of other
rogares
later. It had taken us nearly three weeks to get to this point by boat. I didn’t even want to contemplate how long walking back would take. And, honestly, how would we even get there? We had no land maps; we were abandoning most of the food (even the food we’d brought for the Shallows settlers, which made my heart break). We had to leave the weapons chest. There was no room in the dinghy for that. All our books, our clothes . . . Everything, left behind. That’s what
abandoning ship
means.

In the end, each of us grabbed what we could. I told Burr to get some food. I managed to pocket Alba’s black onion. After a quick trip back to his cabin to retrieve Luck knew what, Rafe carried Fara off the ship. She brought her Book and Virtus. Russ busted open the weapons chest and pulled out five daggers and a sword. The alembic full of waerwater was still fastened around my neck. I guess Ari had been right; it was the safest place for it.

Ari and I went below to retrieve Delgato. While we were down there, I told Ari to grab whatever else he thought he needed. He looked at me long and hard and I knew what he was thinking.
I
was the only thing he needed. Despite everything, I smiled at him. I wasn’t ready to say good-bye. Didn’t want to say good-bye. But I did want him to know I felt the same way he did.

We carried Delgato upstairs together and lowered him into the dinghy. The wraiths had spotted us getting into the dinghy but seemed to be waiting to attack until we pushed off.

“Will you be able to cast Impenetrable over the dinghy once we’re clear of
Cnawlece
?” I asked Rafe. He gave a curt nod, his face tight. I had to hand it to him. Tense as he was, his
potentia
seemed limitless.

Russ was just about to shove off when I noticed Burr was missing.

“Wait!” I cried. “Where’s Burr?” I wished I’d never asked him to go back for food. It wasn’t as if we could take enough anyway. Sooner or later, if we lived (which was starting to look doubtful anyway) we’d have to learn to live off the rush lands if we were going to make it back home. But then, thankfully, Burr appeared a second later, holding several sacks and packages. He threw the larger ones directly into the dinghy and then he tossed a small tin into my lap. My mother’s dried herbs. The ones we used to make tea.

That Burr had risked his life to retrieve something so small, something so insignificant . . . was both touching and confusing to me. But I supposed, to Burr, the herbs weren’t insignificant.

It’s what I got. It’s who I
am.

Burr had gone back inside for what was important to him and he’d gathered the things that brought other people comfort.

I made room for him in the dinghy, nervously eyeing the wraiths in the water, but they didn’t move any closer. In fact, they seemed to move farther away. I don’t know if they were afraid of getting caught in the current or something else, but they actually seemed to retreat as Burr made his way down the ladder toward the waiting dinghy. I gripped the handle of my paddle, ready to row with every ounce of willpower I had left.

But then something happened that stripped it all away.

The bow of
Cnawlece
hit the edge of the whirlpool, causing the boat to turn suddenly away from us. At the same time, Russ started to push us clear. Even so, Burr would have had enough time. But just as he was stepping from the ladder to the dinghy, a massive black river serpent rose up out of the water and grabbed Burr by the leg. He screamed—a horrible, heart-piercing shriek—and managed to cling to the ladder for a split second before being pulled down into the water. A second later I felt a waning magic blur and then something heavy dropped in my lap. I picked it up, stupefied with shock. It was Burr’s filleting knife. The only thing that was left of him.

I will never forget that moment. Not because I killed something. But because I didn’t.

Burr popped up out of the water twenty yards from us, and then thirty, and then sixty. Each time his screams grew quieter as he lost more breath, but somehow I knew the black river serpent (which had to be another hellcnight impersonating the long-dead Ebony) wasn’t going to kill him. Not just yet. It would eat him alive. But instead of killing Burr to prevent that, I wept. I didn’t want to roast Burr into oblivion like I’d roasted the wraiths. I was sick enough over them. But then Ari put an end to Burr’s suffering. The next time he resurfaced, Ari threw a fiery arrow straight through Burr’s heart. Instead of feeling relief, I retched over the side of the dinghy into the water.

Aut amat aut odit mulier.
A woman either loves or hates. That’s what Sarah Meginnis, our Evil Deeds professor, was always telling us about domestic clients. Well, in that moment I hated
everything
. In my all-consuming rage I did something I’d never done before. I blasted the rush lands and all of the wraiths within it with fury, fire, and
darkness
. I poured all of my hatred into that blast. I thought I’d likely never be able to look at my own reflection again. The blackening of my soul (if I had one) was surely nothing compared to the fiery blackening I rained down over our enemies.

But I needn’t have worried. Not only had my mirror gone down with our ship, the wraiths had left as well. We sat, silhouetted against a wall of flaming rush land, stunned and unmoving in our tiny rowboat—the only life left on the Secernere.

Despite the insanity of it, we started rowing toward the fire. Not that any of us were capable of rational thought, but I guess we thought our chances were better against the flames and the demons we knew than a watery death and the demons we didn’t. But it didn’t matter. Nothing did. After all our struggles, spells, defensive maneuvers, attempted rescues, and other efforts, we were all going to die anyway. Because we couldn’t row against this current. Further strength and endurance spells failed. Our oars broke. Ari and Rafe finally collapsed, sweating and shaking. We reached the event horizon for Ebony’s End.

We were going in. We were going under.

We were going to drown.