Chasing the Lantern (2 page)

Striking green eyes held her. Fengel, captain of the pirate crew, was watching her. Even dehydrated and half dead from exposure, he sat with a stiff spine and a proud countenance, as if such fleshly concerns were beneath him. The pirate captain affected a short brown beard and mustache that his steward Henry Smalls trimmed every morning at dawn. He wore a broad tricorn hat and a golden monocle. Lina thought the latter ridiculous, yet still it somehow fit. Middle-aged and well-tanned in his tattered blue jacket, he was the very image of an officer in His Majesty's Royal Navy, which made his status as a notorious sky-pirate all the more incongruous.

Fengel's skin looked clammy and his eyes almost sunken. He gave a short, slow nod of approval, then turned back to face to the bow. As seemed to happen every time he looked her way, Lina felt butterflies in her stomach. She quashed it down and hunkered against the gunwales.

This whole idea was a mistake. He is
not
the reason I came.
Prostitution in the machine-city of Triskelion had been an ugly life, and she'd been looking for a way out for a long time now. When Fengel's men passed through her bordello, airship destroyed and desperate to flee the city, she'd finally found one.
That doesn't change the fact that I should have stuck to whoring. Even that beats dying of exposure, adrift on the open ocean.
The crew all seemed confident that the captain knew where their home port was and could get them there, but Lina had never heard of anyone crossing the Atalian Sea in a weather balloon. And so far at least, they hadn’t.

With a sigh, Lina crossed her arms on the gunwale and rested her chin atop them. She regarded the ocean waves for what seemed the thousandth time. The bay back home was a dark green, and rather cold. Here the water was a deep cerulean, clear for a dozen fathoms below. Lina idly wondered if it would grow so clear she would be able to spy the very ocean floor, hundreds of feet beneath them. That seemed unlikely.

Something moved in the water just below her. It swam out from underneath their longboat only a few feet below the surface, wide and very long.
Some huge fish? A shark?
Lina had never seen any of the weird creatures that sailors sometimes talked about. This thing was as wide across as her armspan and covered in silver scales that shimmered in the daylight.

Her belly grumbled. Lina shook herself, realizing the opportunity. Fish or shark, it was still food. She half-turned to look back down the boat. "Hey," she hissed. "Hey. Anyone have a spear? Or a fishing line?"

Sarah Lome blinked at her sleepily from the opposite side of the boat. The woman was huge, seven feet tall and stocky. Her biceps were thicker than Lina's thighs. Lina didn’t think she’d ever be called pretty, especially with the sunburns she now wore, but no one would ever dare call her homely. "What? A spear?"

"Quick," said Lina. "There's a shark or something. A big fish. Just over the side."

The woman blinked at her again then leaned forward, with far more quickness than Lina thought someone her size should have. Her thick strawberry braid fell over her shoulder as she moved. "Where?"

Lina pointed over the side. "Just here," she said quietly, turning to peer back into the water. Then her mouth fell open and she stared.

The creature was still swimming out from under their boat, but now it curled
down
. What she'd thought a shark or fish was a massive serpent, thicker than her arms could stretch and at least thirty feet in length, growing longer with every passing second. Dimly, just at the edge of what she could see, Lina thought she spied the reptilian head of the thing.

Coming back up at them.

Lina turned back to the boat. "Serpent!" she yelled.

The ocean erupted at her back. Saltwater drenched Lina while the pirate crew let out shouts of alarm. She threw herself to the opposite side of the longboat and turned to face the monster.

The serpent rose up some fifteen feet above the waves. It glared down at them, two black and belligerent eyes peering down from above a coffin-long maw. A rough frill descended from the top of its skull down its length. A wide pair of vicious horns crowned it. Sailors of all kinds agreed that of the many dangers of the sea, none was so terrible as the serpent. Like their land-born cousins, the dragons, sea serpents were large, powerful, and very dangerous. Lina had heard that the biggest could even threaten armored steamships.

This one opened its mouth and hissed. Lina spied rows of razor fangs and a bright red tongue. The smell of rotted fish wafted over them and she thought she was going to gag. It almost seemed to grin. Then the beast rose even higher, bending its length over their heads, and dove back into the water on the side opposite. The whole boat shook with the impact and the gunwales beneath its body cracked. The crew shouted and scrabbled about for cover, reaching for their weapons.

"On your feet, you laggards!"

Sarah Lome grabbed up an oar out of the bilge and held it like a club just as the serpent rose again, enclosing their vessel in a single coil. She stepped forward and swung the oar in a huge two-handed blow. It connected with the maw of the beast before it had risen more than a few feet. The monster jerked back, shaking the whole boat, yowling and rearing in surprise. Lina stumbled and clutched the opposite gunwale. Out in the water she spied the writhing humps of its body in the surf; the monster had to be eighty feet long.

"Drive it off!" yelled Henry Smalls. "Don't let it crush the boat!" The little steward had a dagger in hand and was hacking and jabbing at the coil in the middle of their ship. His blade scraped and scored and finally hit home. The serpent gave a grunt.

Other crewmen set about the monster. A man with filed-down teeth and patchy red hair struck a solid blow with his hatchet. The serpent yowled again, its voice like bending iron. It darted in, lightning quick, knocking Sara Lome down and biting at the other pirate who'd struck. He shouted and swung at its nose, just ducking aside.

Lina stared in horror as the maw of the thing passed just inches away from her. Then the serpent shifted back. Something in the wooden hull of the boat cracked as it moved.
Yet another challenge. All right. I won't back down
. Lina drew a dagger and threw herself at the coil of the serpent. She scrabbled over Sarah Lome to hack and stab at the monster. Its scales were too thick though, too tough. The beast was going to break their ship and then devour them from the water, one by one.

Sarah Lome caught Lina's eye. "Keep at it," she said. Then she stood, took her oar up again in both hands, and yelled. "Hey! Hey, beast!" She turned and swung at the coil of the monster. The oar cracked in half with a sound like a gunshot.

The serpent roared. It reared back and glared at Sarah Lome. The piratess grinned a feral grin and took up a stance with her broken oar. The monster darted down at her.

Glowing arcane liquid sprayed across the face of the serpent. It roared again and jerked backwards. The whole vessel shook with its throes, flinging the pirates about. Lina lost her footing and fell down against the gunwales, her dagger landing next to her in the bilge. More liquid fire shot out to score the thing, turning its scales black and pitted.

Maxim stood upright near the stern, half-cloak and long black hair flapping in the breeze, eyes stern above his prominent nose. The aetherite had both hands clasped together over some arcane Working that seethed and seeped liquid light. Drops of it dribbled down to the waves, crackling and spattering where they touched the water.

"Back!" he cried, accent thick. He flung the conjured liquid in another scalding spray at the serpent. The creature darted away, but coiled as it was around the boat, it couldn't dodge far enough. A few caustic drops still caught it across the side.

The serpent roared and sank back down beneath the waves. Its coiled length loosened and shifted, pulling free from the longboat. The little vessel rocked and shook, until the finned tail slipped over their heads, then down into the waves.

Pirates stood frozen, waiting for another attack. Henry Smalls crouched with his knife like a bulldog ready to pounce, Sarah Lome clutched her broken oar. Oscar Pleasant stood in the middle of the boat, looking frantically around at the roiling sea. He had a dagger clutched in one hand and Lina's severed hair in the other. Maxim scowled and released the rest of his conjured hell-spittle. It scattered overboard with a sizzling pop, like hot bacon grease poured into cold water.

"Is...is that it?" asked Oscar. "Is it gone?"

The ocean exploded beside him. The serpent reared up, skin blackened and smoldering. Oscar flung himself aside with a scream as it struck out, jaws wide. Lina drew her other dagger, pointing in futility at it. But the serpent pulled back and sank below the waves before anyone else could react.

One minute passed, then another. The pirates spread out to watch the water, weapons held at the ready. It did not rise again though. The serpent was gone.

The crew relaxed. Sarah Lome lay down her oar. Then she spied Oscar and belted out a laugh. Lina glanced over to where the pirate lay in the middle of the boat, shaking, pale and white. He clutched his knife still in the one hand. In the other he held only a small tuft of what was left of Lina's long hair.

Oscar looked down at the bits of hair, then up at the huge woman. "S'not funny!" he yelled. "That could have been my arm!" He scrambled to his feet as others joined in. "It's not funny, damn yer eyes! I almost died, and we're worse off now than before! That damned snake cracked the hull. Look, we're taking on water!"

Lina grabbed up her dagger as she glanced down at the bilge. He was right. Water was dribbling in through several cracks in the wood. And the waves were just level with the gunwales where the sea serpent had crushed them.

"Mr. Pleasant," said their captain.

Lina glanced up at the bow. Captain Fengel had half-turned to face the crew. He had a hand upon the pommel of his sword, though the blade was only drawn an inch, as if he had only just now decided to involve himself in the serpent attack.

"If you are quite done with histrionics," continued Fengel, "I suggest you begin to bail, and the rest of you, row." He swayed slightly, certainly just the swell of the waves beneath the boat. Fengel pointed out at the horizon. Distantly, Lina could just make out a dark speck. "The Copper Isles. We're finally home."

Silence reigned as the crew peered out over the ocean. Then they became ebullient.

"We made it!" cried Oscar Pleasant. "We made it!"

"
Wir werden leben!
" yelled Maxim, reverting to his native tongue in excitement.

"The Captain did it," said Sarah Lome, voice soft with wonder. She threw herself back down onto a bench and reached for an oar as the pirates all praised the Goddess, their leaky longboat, and the Captain himself. "Quiet," she bellowed at them. "Oscar's right for once. Captain's got us this far, now it's time for us to do the rest, before we all sink. Henry, get to the tiller. Oscar, Geoffrey, Maxim, start bailing. The rest of you, row!"

What followed was some of the most backbreaking labor that Lina had ever been subjected to. Stroke by stroke they approached the horizon, Sarah Lome doing the lion's share of the work, rowing as much as any three other men combined. Henry Smalls guided from the tiller. The rest used their hands to help paddle or bail leaking water from the bilge.

The distant speck resolved into a small island chain as the sun crawled down from the sky. Lina spied no beaches, only sheer sea-cliffs riddled with shining veins of copper and topped with thick and impenetrable jungle. Jagged rocks and outcrops protected the approach from every direction. These were the Copper Isles, a notorious pirate haven and the bane of shipping between the Western Continent of Edrus and the newly discovered continent of Yulan.

Evening found them paddling out of a small canyon waterway into a lagoon deep within the interior of the isles. The cove was ringed by the same sheer, hundred-foot-high cliffs that Lina had seen everywhere else in this place. Green vines and vegetation crept down from the heights to drape across the other waterways that led here, most only big enough for a longboat. The far end of the cove was gentler, and the cliff there slanted down to the water in a series of natural terraces. A town had been built upon these, an echo in wood and stone of the creepers and growth hanging elsewhere above the cove. Lina spotted houses, shops, and workmen's huts, all hanging precariously, linked by rickety bridges and suspended boardwalks. A series of piers stretched out from the bottom of the township, a pair of sail ships now at dock. Mirror to its twin below, the top of the town supported another harbor, though for a very different kind of vessel.

Like great bulbous fish, the skyship gasbags stretched golden and gleaming in the fading sunlight, shining sails spread wide along their lengths. Beneath each hung the long shape of the vessel itself, a hull like any other ship attached by thick cables to the oblong balloon frame. There were half a dozen of the wondrous vessels, and Lina's breath caught in her chest at the sight of them.

This was Haventown. Home port of Fengel's Men and the only sky-pirate den in all the seas that were known.

"Just a little farther," croaked Henry Smalls.

The steward's voice brought her back to the present. Lina bent back to bailing, cupping her hands and tossing water overboard. The crewmen around her were ready to collapse in exhaustion, and she was as well. The only one who did not row or bail was the captain, sitting serenely up at the bow, confident that his crew would not fail him. By now the water in their bilge filled a quarter of the boat, and was halfway up Lina's calves where she sat on a bench.

"Put your backs into it!" roared Sarah. The piratess heaved at the oars, seemingly indomitable. The dying vessel surged with each powerful stroke, leaping forward in fits and starts.

Lina felt like she would die. Slowly they crossed the lagoon, sinking lower with every passing moment. Two-thirds of the way across, the water came up to her waist, the bench seat she sat on only just above the waterline. When they finally made it to the town and pulled in along an empty pier, only the tips of the gunwales were above the water.