Burning Bright (45 page)

“The Marines are all dead, or as good as,” she heard Beaumont shout over the furor of cannons and screams. “Evans knew we were coming! There are at least seven ships!”

“
Breton
and
Hornet
are both trapped between our ships and the harbor, and
Chariot’s
not going to survive another broadside!” Ramsay roared at him.

“Captain, I can—” Elinor called out.

“Stay where you are and that is an order, Miss Pembroke! Find a way to shut down that emplacement!”

“But—” Furious, Elinor shut her mouth. She had
not
been about to suggest she go in alone and it was unfair of him not to listen to her. Durrant’s plan had been too careless, too dependent on things not going wrong. It was
stupid
and now men would die for it.

She summoned another fireball, but instead of flinging it, she focused on telling it to move, to fly up the cliff and hover near the emplacement to give her light. The fortification was too far away for her to make out details, but she could see the dark smudge where the cannon bores emerged from the stone, and it was enough. She thought,
Well, if I am wrong about this, it is not as if anyone knows enough about Scorchers to criticize.

What she needed was a long, thin tongue of fire, and if there were anything to burn in the area, she could set it alight and shape it into the right form. But perhaps the highly diffuse ball of fire might be enough. She closed her eyes. There it was, her other self, far away and very quiet, but when she spoke to it, the fire sprang to greater life.

She spread it flat, rolled it like dough, spun it into a spear and ran it into the slot as hard as she could. A narrow space, then it opened up, and she released the fire and let it expand as fierce and hot as it wanted, it was so
beautiful
and desperate to grow, and she heard the seabirds’ cawing cries again and realized they were the voices of dying men. She opened her eyes and saw that faint glow on the far-off cliff. Her heart was pounding with exhilaration.
I need something else to burn
.

“Captain!” she shouted. “What else am I to do?”

Ramsay was deep in conversation with Beaumont and did not hear her until she came nearer and shouted at him again. “The emplacement!” he called out over the noise of screams and thunder.

She shook her head. “It is done!”

Ramsay glanced at the cliff. “Use your initiative, Miss Pembroke!” He ran forward to speak to the helmsman.

The enemy Scorchers were still sending up fireballs.
Chariot
was foundering, directly in
Hornet’
s path now, but
Breton
had extricated herself and was making way for
Syren
. But the pirate ships were advancing, and they seemed to know exactly where to be to avoid taking any hits from the Navy ships. Another two pirate ships had begun to emerge from the harbor—what strategy had Evans formed, what had he Seen? He had known enough to summon more ships to fight them. How could he possibly have known they were coming?

The emplacement was silent, fire still glowing along the thin open line. Elinor half-ran, half-stumbled toward the bow. The battle raged far ahead—still too far? She reached out to set the nearest pirate ship alight and felt relief and fierce pleasure when the deck lit with flame. The sails, next—they had been treated, so it was more of an effort, but she—

The deck fire went out.
Dewdney
.

Elinor lit the deck a second time and
leaned
into it, and felt a pressure leaning back, as if she and Dewdney were on opposite sides of the same door, fighting to see who could push it open first. She could feel the fire being twisted, contorted out of shape in its conflict to decide which master to serve, but it would be her, she would not allow this man to defeat her,
would not—

The pressure vanished so abruptly she had to fling her arms about the rail to keep from going over. She screamed her triumph, not that anyone could hear her over the rest of the battle cries.

Then, in the distance, she saw fire break out on
Exordia
’s deck, and on crippled
Chariot’s
masts and sails. She loosed control of her fire to extinguish the new ones and felt hers go out with a snap. Furious, she lit it again and saw the same fires spring up again on the Navy ships, then all three went out as she and Dewdney repeated their gruesome dance. They might be at this all night—but no, the pirate ship was out of her reach again, because
Athena
was moving farther out to sea.

She abandoned her attack and raced back down the deck to look for Ramsay, who had disappeared. “Why are we moving away?” she demanded of the helmsman.

“Comin’ ab’t,” he said in a hoarse voice, barely audible over the cannon fire. “Tekkin’
Chariot’s
place.”

“But
Chariot
cannot move! We are going too far away, Mr. Wynn! I cannot burn them from here!”

“You’ll have to wait,” Ramsay said from behind her, taking her by the shoulders and firmly moving her out of his way. “Stay below until I send for you.”

“I will
not
stay below!”

“You
will
obey orders, Miss Pembroke, or you will get decent men killed with your recalcitrance! Don’t think you are the only weapon in this fight!” Ramsay’s eyes blazed at her, the only bright thing in this dim world, and she felt as if he’d slapped her.

He said I wasn’t a weapon. I suppose he was wrong.

Without another word, she ran down the companionway and into the great cabin, where she leaned on the window frame and tried to see something that would burn.

She cursed herself, her lack of understanding of naval warfare, her inability to look at the way the ships were moving and understand what it meant, because she was useless at this distance and did not understand the strategy in any case. All she knew was that
Chariot
was certainly sinking, and would not be able to move out of anyone’s way.
Athena
would be forced to stay far away from the battle, and Elinor would be unable to fight, and for all she knew Ramsay would face a court-martial and be hanged for not taking the fight to the pirates. And she could do nothing about any of that.

No. She still had one choice left to her.

Before she could talk herself back into reason, she left the great cabin and went down to the mess deck and into the officers’ gunroom, shoving past sailors carrying their wounded shipmates down the companionway or running up the steps, newly Healed, to rejoin the fight. Hays was in the process of Healing someone’s broken leg.

The sound of battle was as loud here as it was above, but was not tuned to a higher pitch by the screams of injured men; Elinor saw white faces, heard a few moans, but the more severely injured had been rendered unconscious by Hays’ touch. The ship lurched again, forcing Elinor to grab hold of the door frame. “Dr. Hays, I am looking for Mr. Hervey,” she said.

“I’m right here, Elinor,” Stratford said from behind her. “What are you doing down here?”

“I need to talk with you about something important,” Elinor said, pushing him out of the gunroom and into the quiet darkness of the empty deck, where the sounds of fighting and dying were muffled by planking and the sea. “Stratford, I need you to take me to shore.”

“Are you mad? I’m not taking you anywhere near there. Captain would have a fit
and
we’d both get killed.”

“No. We won’t. Their ships are all moving out of the harbor and there cannot be anyone left there. And even if there were, it would not matter, because our fleet will be destroyed if I cannot burn those ships, and I cannot reach them from here. By the time
Athena
has maneuvered into position, it will be far too late for far too many men. Please, Stratford. It will take only a few minutes. Half an hour at the most, and no one will be shooting at us.”

“No. Elinor, no. The captain wouldn’t allow it.”

“The captain told me to use my initiative.”

“He didn’t mean going into the middle of a battle.”

“I am a weapon, Stratford. The middle of a battle is where I belong.” She felt like a weapon, fire bound up inside her waiting to be unleashed on the enemy.

Stratford clutched at his hair with both hands and turned away from her. “Why can’t you wait until we’re within range again? It can’t be that long.”

Elinor swore, causing Stratford to stare at her in astonishment. “Come with me,” she said, and pulled him up the ladders to the deck, then hauled him along toward the bow until they were well out of sight of the quarterdeck. “Look,” she said, waving her hand at the distant battle. “They are
dying
and all we can do is watch. I cannot stand by and allow that to happen.
Please
, Stratford.”

Stratford put both hands on the rail and looked down at the water below. Now that
Athena
was out of range of both the cliff-mounted and ship-mounted guns, and her wounded had mostly been treated, the noise level had dropped considerably, though the shouts and commands that flew through the air had an extra urgency about them. The smell of gunpowder, the residue that burned her eyes, made her feel as if she were standing with those distant fighters, staggering under the brunt of another attack. “What about that Scorcher?” Stratford said.

“I will be better able to fight him if I am not also at the edge of my reach,” Elinor said, hoping it was true.

Stratford shook his head. “We go in, we go out. No heroics, all right? And if I hear about this from the captain, I’m blaming it all on you.”

“Your unchivalrous behavior pleases me. Thank you, Stratford.”

He shrugged, shaking his head again, and put his arm around her waist. “Never Skipped with a passenger before,” he said. “You might want to close your eyes if you get dizzy.”

Before Elinor could draw breath to answer, she felt momentarily insubstantial, and then she was
falling
. How had she forgotten about the falling? She clapped a hand over her mouth to hold back a scream. Then she was again nonexistent, then the harbor and the ships were closer and she was falling
again
. It looked as if the harbor was hopping toward them between blinks, like a giant toad, the shoreline its mouth and the cliffs rising around it the warts on its back. Elinor did feel dizzy, but she was afraid to close her eyes, afraid Stratford might overshoot or drop her or something else that would make this whole venture meaningless.

Then they came out of a Skip close to the ground, and when they dropped, it was only a foot’s distance, and Elinor stumbled but caught herself before she fell on her face. They stood at the water’s edge, facing the log fortress Elinor recognized from the Seers’ drawings.

While the noise of battle was greater here than on
Athena
, it was still distant enough that the fortress and the huts drawn up near it could have been a quiet island community, if a small one. There was no sand on this beach; the rock sloped down into the water at a rather sharper angle than a natural beach would have, and gravel took the place of sand, hard and pebbly beneath Elinor’s thin-soled shoe. Somewhere above was the harbor emplacement, still silent, and across the harbor one ship, the largest, lagged behind the others, firing its bow chasers into the darkness.

“So start your fires, and let’s be off,” Stratford said, looking around nervously. “This place is unnatural.”

“I know.” Elinor reached out, testing her limits. She had been correct; all the ships were close enough. It was unfortunate she could not burn all the ships at once, but the thought made her spine ache with preemptive pain, so she concentrated on the nearest one, thinking to roust Dewdney from wherever he was hiding.

The deck obediently began burning down its whole length, and soon the distant triumphant shouts turned into screams. She let it burn for a minute. No Dewdney. She turned her attention to a different ship and was filled with unease. This was far too easy. The Extraordinary Scorcher had to be somewhere. None of the Navy ships were on fire, so what could he be doing?

Stratford stepped in and grabbed her elbow. “Elinor, we need—”

She heard several distant popping sounds, and Stratford grunted and sagged, pulling Elinor down with him. “What—” she began, pulling out of his grasp, then said, “Stratford, get up. Get up!”

He looked at her, his eyes huge and glassy in the dim light from the distant, burning ship, and worked his lips soundlessly a few times. “Back,” he said.

More popping, this time louder and closer and sharper, and it wasn’t popping at all, it was musket fire. Elinor looked away from Stratford and saw a cluster of dark figures running toward them and shouting unintelligibly. Pirates, but—
oh, no. From the emplacement
. It had been so dark and still that she had forgotten it would still have been manned, against the chance the Navy made it into the harbor, and now those pirates were headed directly for them.

She pulled on Stratford’s arm, trying to help him rise, and he scrabbled at the rock with his left hand, pushing at it. “We need to Bound back to
Athena
,” she said, “please, Stratford, I know you can do it,
please
don’t give up!”

He looked at her again, said “Try…tomorrow,” and then the weight of his arm, the boneless, unresisting weight, told her he was gone. Elinor clutched at his hand. If she held on tightly enough, he would come back. He always came back.

Hard boots on bare rock came nearer. She was beginning to understand what they were saying, enough of it, anyway, to know they realized she was female and alone and defenseless, that they had shot her friend and now they were going to have fun with her.

She released Stratford’s hand, stood and turned to face the men, who had slowed down now and were jostling each other as if working out who would have fun with her first. They were man-shaped shadows to her uncomprehending brain. Shadows in the darkness, and Stratford’s body was still warm at her feet. Her pain and guilt at being responsible for Stratford even being here in this godforsaken place to be shot became fury, though whether at herself or at the pirates, she did not know.