Burning Bright (23 page)

More time passed. The ships were close enough now that she was certain she could burn them if necessary. She glanced back at Ramsay, but he wasn’t paying any attention to her.
Soon, soon, let it be soon.
What was he waiting for? The pirates flew no colors, had not attacked them—suppose this was merely a merchant convoy? Attacking them prematurely could be disastrous; waiting for them to attack first could be fatal. She gripped the rail again and waited to see if her hands would again catch fire, but nothing happened.

There were four of the Bermuda sloops spaced around two larger ships, both smaller than
Athena
, but still sizable. If they had gun ports, they were closed, because their sides were uninterrupted white planking trimmed red. Were those pirate colors? Didn’t pirates fly black or red flags with horrific images on them? The smell of smoke, again, and Elinor swore, then clapped a burning hand to her mouth. The fire didn’t hurt her face, either. This was a terrible time for her talent to manifest a new and disturbing aspect.

All at once there were flashes of light on the other ships’ decks, then the crumpled thump of cannon fire. Cannonballs whistled through the air to land short of
Athena
’s stern, and the foremast caught fire. Black flags bearing white skulls and hourglasses shot up to fly above the two larger ships as the gun ports flew open, revealing the gaping mouths of rows of cannons.

“
Raise colors!
” Ramsay shouted, then, “
Miss Pembroke! Now!”

Elinor took in the scene before her, fixed her eyes on her targets, and swept the sea with fire.

In which Elinor demonstrates her talent to an unwilling audience

ll four of the sloops’ masts caught fire at once, turning them into gold-red pillars of flame pointing at the cloudless sky. For nearly a minute, they burned untouched. Then Elinor felt the tugs at her attention that told her the crews were attempting to put out her fire. She extinguished
Athena
’s foremast and tried to increase her own fire’s power, but quickly discovered she could not control all four fires and also extinguish the ones the enemy Scorcher, or Scorchers, tried to light. She was barely able to defend her fires against the buckets of water and the sprays of a strange liquid that snuffed out whatever it touched.

So she changed tactics. She left three of the fires to burn as they would, kept part of her attention on defending
Athena
, and turned the rest of her focus to the fourth ship, the one closest to
Athena
. The part of her that was fire observed that that ship had eight guns on its deck, which looked absurdly large for the slim, elegant craft. It was a pity they would have to sink her. She ran the fire down the mast like fingers stroking fur, and found a place above the heads of the desperate crew.

She had, as a child, spent time in the kitchen watching Mrs. Branton, the cook, prepare all sorts of foods, and had been fascinated to see her slice cheese with nothing more than a thin wire. “It’s the tension, love,” Mrs. Branton had told her. “Pull it tight enough and it’ll slice through near anything.”

She peeled away a long, long string of fire and looped it around the mast, crossing its ends and, picturing the cheese-wire, pulling tight. She could feel the fire understand her intent and pour into the groove she was burning into the mast, devouring the wood as if racing to see which flame could reach the center first.

The mast fell before that happened. Eaten away on all sides like an apple, supported only by its fragile core, the mast cracked and fell like an ancient pine, rocking the ship and tossing more than a few men over the side. Elinor had no time to feel pity for them; her attention returned to the other three ships, where she discovered one crew had managed to put out her fire completely.
That is unacceptable
, she thought, and set the mast afire again, this time extending the flames across the sails to keep them occupied.

She had practiced for hours, learning how to burn away the thin resin that soaked into the canvas and left it pliant but almost impossible to ignite. Now she
leaned
on the fire and rejoiced in the green-blue flame the resin made, a color resembling that of the shallows surrounding the nearby islands. Two fireballs in quick succession flew at
Athena’
s deck from both the larger ships, and Elinor made them vanish like mist. She laughed at the marvelous quickening of power that ran through her, pulsing in time with her heartbeat.

Someone grabbed her from behind. Another man tackled her legs. She was flat on the deck and furious before she registered that they were telling her to get down, stay down, and a cannonball struck the rail five feet from where she’d been standing, showering the three of them with a hail of prickling splinters. Suddenly the world was echoing with shouts and screams and the whistling of cannonballs, a deafening contrast to the silence that had surrounded her in her concentration.

She shouted, “I cannot leave yet!”

They ignored her and half-dragged, half-carried her to the quarterdeck, where they handed her over to Ramsay. He pushed her toward the stern and shouted, “Stay down! I told you to return when I called!”

“The sloops are not yet destroyed!”

“So do it from back here. And stay down!”

Elinor stood long enough to survey the battle. The ship whose mast she had cut down lay rocking on the waves, its crew clambering over fallen rigging and sails in a vain attempt to rejoin the battle. The enemy Scorchers, wherever they were, were still trying to burn
Athena’s
masts and sails, but Elinor’s skill at switching her concentration from putting out fires to starting them was growing, and
Athena
was barely singed.

One sloop was still burning green-blue. One of the others had nearly succeeded in putting out the fire; she flicked a command at it and it blazed hotter than before. Fire consumed the deck of the third, and men were screaming and leaping from it into the sea, where they disappeared from her sight. She felt neither guilt nor sorrow over that; she had no time for such indulgences.

Of the larger ships, one had clearly received the brunt of
Athena
’s long guns; its sails were shredded and its deck splintered, but it was still valiantly trying to bring its guns to bear. As she watched, two of those guns flew off the deck and plummeted into the sea, one dragging a screaming pirate with it. Apparently they were close enough for Ramsay to use his talent against the enemy. The other ship was in far better condition and was working its way around to put
Athena
between itself and its consort.

Athena’
s deck was a tangle of fallen rigging and shattered wood, and a few men lay fallen and bloody where they had not, or could not, be retrieved by their fellows.
Athena
shuddered as its guns pounded at the damaged ship again. Elinor extinguished yet another fire on
Athena’s
main topsail and began putting some effort into lighting the battered ship’s sails.

“
Miss Pembroke
!” shouted the captain. Elinor caught herself and realized one of the sloops, the one whose crew had nearly extinguished its fire, was sailing toward the battle despite the small-arms fire from
Athena’s
Marines. It had been well to starboard, out of the path of both pirate ships, and Elinor had not thought it worth expending her talent to do more than keep its deck ablaze. Now it was steadily making its way against the wind toward
Athena
. Either its captain was brave or foolhardy, but Elinor recognized in him a clever adversary who would require her to change tactics. She assured herself that the other two fires were burning steadily—the one with its deck ablaze was listing heavily to one side and would no longer be a threat—then turned her attention to the last sloop.

They had done something to the deck—oh, they had poured the resin over it, and her fire could not spread across it. Clever. She hoped no one else came up with that solution. They were coming closer, and she would not be able to burn the treated sails in time. The guns, could she melt the guns? She reached out to let fire caress the brass barrel of one, and knew she could make it run like liquid, but again, not in time. Surely they could do little damage to
Athena
, but Elinor could not bear the thought of losing even the few lives the sloop might manage to take.

It took her only a second to know what she had to do, another second to be repulsed by it, and a third to summon the fire and turn every man on the sloop’s deck into a screaming, fiery pillar.

She didn’t even have to maintain her control. They staggered, and waved their arms, and some of them found the rail and toppled over it, leaving it smoldering behind them. Others fell to the deck, convulsing and crying out. She watched, dispassionate, because nothing about the scene made sense to her; the screaming men might have been animals keening in the night.

Then one of the men bobbing in the ocean seemed to look at her, though he could hardly have identified her from this distance, and his face was blackened and unrecognizable as human. She jerked as if waking from a nightmare, stuffed her hand in her mouth to keep from screaming, and extinguished the remaining human fires. Then she hung over the taffrail and vomited clear liquid and cloudy yellow bile onto the stern windows.

She tried not to imagine what it must smell like on that deck, roasted meat and melted lacquer and burned paint and smoky, charred wood, and vomited again until she felt she had nothing left in her. Her back ached as if she had been beaten, her spine was a streak of sharp pain, and her abused stomach was still trying to turn itself inside out. She swallowed, gagged on the bitter taste of her saliva, and pushed her hair out of her eyes where it had fallen sometime during her exertions. She had—she could see that blackened face in memory, and wanted to curl into a ball and crush that memory out of existence.

It’s not over. I have to save
Athena
. This has to be worth it.

She turned the green-blue sails to ash that sifted down over the unburned pirates, looped the mast with fire and brought it down on the sloop’s deck, then spread that fire out to cover every inch of the planking, forcing herself not to listen to the screams as men leapt from the burning ship into the unwelcoming Caribbean waters. She burned a hole near the waterline of the listing sloop to encourage it to sink quietly, and watched for a moment as water bubbled up around it; there was no one left on its deck.

She looked around for something else to do. Ramsay was gone. All the lieutenants were gone. It seemed the cannons had swept the crew off the decks to carry them away into the sea, or possibly all the way to the Bahamian islands surrounding them. The helmsman Mr. Wynn was still there, stolid like a block of granite, and a few sailors manned the 12-pounders at the bow, and a handful of others scrambled about doing the same incomprehensible things they always did.

The much-battered pirate ship lay a few lengths off the larboard side, and Elinor could hear distant cries, the ringing clash of metal on metal, and the echoing blasts of small arms fire.
Athena
was tethered to the other ship, but Elinor heard no noise from it.