The Voyage to Magical North (29 page)

Brine landed in the middle of a group of Ewan Hugheses. Rob Grosse appeared out of nowhere and decapitated two of them. There was surprisingly little blood, just a thin oily ooze. Rob's face was slashed from his ear to his chin, but he didn't seem to have noticed.

“Does Cassie know you're here?” he asked.

“Not yet.” Brine drew her sword and pushed her way after him. A whole crowd of Ewans knocked her down. She yelled and rolled backward, head over heels. A sword hit the deck right beside her, and she got her sword in front of her just in time to parry another blow. No time to think—too many people were trying to hit her.

Then Cassie was there, a cutlass in each hand. Her hair swung around her, and she moved so fast she appeared to be dancing, or flying. Pirates rushed at her and fell beneath her blades, but as each one died, another took its place.

“Behind you!” shouted Brine.

Cassie twisted mid-leap, away from a Ewan that was stabbing at her shoulder blades. She kicked the Ewan back, skewered it through the heart, and came down facing Brine. “I thought I told you to stay on the
Onion
.”

Another Ewan ran at them. Without thinking, Brine threw her cutlass at it, finishing it off. Brine grinned. She was Brine the pirate warrior, and she was armed and dangerous. Well, not armed anymore, but still dangerous. “We have to find the starshell,” she said. “Marfak West is killing it.”

Cassie booted a Trudi backward. “You can't kill starshell. It's not alive.”

“Yes, it is,” Brine said, searching around the deck. There had to be a way down somewhere. She caught a flash of silver on the edge of her vision and spun toward it. “Over there. A hatch.” Pirate copies blocked their path. Cassie fought them all grimly. Brine kept close behind her, her breath tight in her chest. A sharp pain went through her leg, and she looked down to see a little Ewan Hughes, only knee-high, brandishing a sword. Brine gritted her teeth and trod on him without looking. Something squished unpleasantly beneath her feet.

Cassie pulled her aside to avoid another batch of Ewans, and then Brine saw it again—between the staggering feet, the outline of a hatch. Silver flashes popped around the edges. Brine ran to it and dropped to her knees. There was no handle. She tried tugging at the corners, then pushing on them, then she grabbed a dagger from the deck and tried jamming it in the crack. The square of wood fit so tightly into the deck that nothing would go in.

“Open, will you?” said Brine. She punched the deck in frustration.

“I don't think it's working,” said Cassie helpfully.

Brine glared at her. “You do something, then. You're the hero.”

“Me?” Cassie shrugged. “I just hit things with swords.” She hit the hatch with her sword. It didn't move.

A Ewan Hughes loomed over them, bigger and uglier than all the other ones. Brine screamed and then realized that this Ewan was bleeding in several places, missing half a front tooth, and grinning as if he were in the middle of a party.

“Having trouble?” he asked. He handed Brine his sword, drew a pair of daggers, paused a moment, then raised his arms and drove them with a yell straight down into the deck.

They connected with a thud that must have bent the blades. Brine caught her breath as Ewan Hughes ground his teeth and pulled. The hatch, caught on the very tip of one blade, lifted a fraction, then a fraction more.

Brine thrust her fingers under one side. Cassie caught the other. It was like trying to move a mountain, but they all heaved together, and little by little, the hatch creaked open.

It flew back suddenly as a battalion of Ewan Hugheses leaped out at them. Cassie somersaulted into them with a shout. A flurry of sword-waving later, she reappeared.

“Coming?” she asked.

*   *   *

Tom saw Brine land on board the
Antares
and quickly lost sight of her. From this distance, it was impossible to tell who was winning, or even who was who. It didn't help that the sea was becoming choppy and the
Onion
lurched from side to side. Tom clung to the mast and somehow stayed on his feet. Around him, the few crew members who weren't fighting on the
Antares
struggled to keep the ship steady. Tom might as well have been invisible for all the notice they took of him. He'd never felt so useless. Cassie had trusted him to do the right thing, and he didn't even trust his own knees to hold him up.

The
Onion
tilted, almost throwing him into the sea. Bill Lightning ran to the helm, shouting orders.

“What's happening?” asked Tom, and then he saw and his heart turned to ice.

The sea was rising up. It looked like the Dreaded Great Sea Beast of the South emerging from the deep. Wave piled upon wave; waters gathered together and rolled up higher and higher until they formed a wall that was at least twenty times taller than the ship. And, looking down, all Tom could see was a gaping, empty hole, edged with black waves, reaching down and down, all the way to the bottom of the ocean.

*   *   *

Brine tore through the corridors belowdecks with Cassie and Ewan on her heels and a lot more Cassies and Ewans just behind. Something was wrong with them. They staggered and tripped, bouncing off icicles and trampling over one another, but they kept coming.

Cassie and Ewan stopped and turned to face them. “Go,” shouted Cassie to Brine. “Find Peter.”

Brine ran. She heard the sound of fighting from behind and Cassie's voice shouting at her to hurry, then she turned a corner and the sounds became muddled. The corridor turned cold as she ran, and the floor grew slippery with ice. Spotting a doorway full of light, she plunged through it and skidded to a halt.

The floor was littered with fish. In the middle, the starshell egg sat on top of a column of shining ice. Peter and Marfak West stood on either side of it, neither of them moving. Icicles hung from Peter's ears and from Marfak West's nose. Peter's face was twisted up, and he was leaning back from the starshell as if he'd been trying to get away when his hands had frozen to it. He looked dazed and bruised, so pale that Brine wondered if he'd died and she was seeing his ghost.

She threw a fish at him. “Peter, you squid-brained idiot,” she said.

Peter jumped and turned his head. “Oh, n—” he began. That was as far as he got.

Marfak West swung round, one hand raised. Brine reacted without thinking, diving flat as the magician released a blast of magic that shattered the wall where she'd been standing. She scrambled up, terror turning her mind blank. All her planning hadn't prepared her for this.

Then she heard Cassie shouting her name and Marfak West turned toward the door. Brine found she could think again. “Peter,” she gasped, “the starshell is an egg. It's trying to hatch.”

“Of course it's an egg, you silly girl,” said Marfak West over his shoulder. He waved his hands across the doorway, filling it with thick ice just as Cassie and Ewan appeared outside. As they beat on it, he turned back to face Brine. “I know what it is,” he said softly. “I know more than you can possibly imagine. You want to know who you are? I can tell you that. The Western Island, the floating castle. You don't remember any of it, but I've seen it all.”

Brine's mouth turned dry. “You're lying,” she said, but she knew he wasn't. Marfak West didn't lie, not about the things that mattered. She tried to look like she didn't care. “If you're going to tell me you're really my father—”

“Do I look like your father?” The magician's voice dripped scorn. He paused and smiled. “I did meet him once—a long time ago, when you were just a baby.”

Marfak West knew her father? Marfak West had seen her when she was a baby? Brine took a step back. The magician spread his hands wide. The room they were in filled with amber light, and the
Antares
groaned and shuddered. All the torches in the room went out, then flared back to life brighter than ever.

“I'm tired of Peter as an apprentice,” said Marfak West. “I'm thinking I might just take on a non-magical assistant instead. Join me and we'll sail the
Antares
across the Western Ocean to Orion's Keep, where you began your life. We'll find your family together.”

“Brine, don't do it,” said Peter.

Brine had no intention of doing anything Marfak West suggested. She didn't care what the magician knew about her; she saw the emptiness at his heart, and it terrified her. People feared him, and everyone hated him. He needed somebody like her or Peter, someone he could turn into a copy of himself, just so he wouldn't be quite so alone.

Brine pulled herself up straight and released a shuddering breath. “I already know who I am,” she said, and it was true. Whoever she might have been, she was Brine Seaborne: once the magician's servant, now the friend of pirates. Brine Seaborne, pulled out of the waves to start life over again. She was Brine, and right now there was only one thing she wanted to do.

“This isn't about me,” she said. Outside, Ewan was stabbing the ice with his daggers while Cassie fought pirate copies. “That egg contains a … a legend. You can't kill it.”

“Legends are stories, and stories are lies,” mocked Marfak West. “We're better off without them. Magic exists to be used. Used by people like me. Now, how would you like to die?”

“Of old age?” suggested Peter.

The ice in the doorway splintered. Ewan Hughes's arm broke through. “Peter!” he shouted. He tossed something that glittered gold and amber as it fell.

Peter snatched it up: a gold chain hung with three slender pieces of starshell.

 

C
HAPTER
35

How long does it take for something real to become a legend? In my reckoning, the last member of the species
Draconus basilicus
become extinct over eight hundred years ago. Now they exist only in stories.

(
From
ALDEBRAN
BOSWELL
'
S
JOURNAL
OF
STRANGE
ADVENTURES
IN
THE
YEAR
OF
DISCOVERY)

Tom tore his gaze away from the sea. The great wave hung motionless, but very soon, he thought, it would come crashing down, and when it did, it would crush the
Onion
to nothing. He needed a plan.

“We're too close,” he said. “We need to pull back.” He strode over to Bill Lightning. “Are you listening to me? Turn the
Onion
around.”

“The
Onion
doesn't retreat,” said Bill.

Tom's cheeks stung. “I am Acting Captain of the
Onion
, and when I am speaking to you, you will do me the courtesy of paying attention.”

“Do you the what?” Bill was paying attention now, but he looked as if he might be about to start laughing.

Tom's blood pounded. He saw the rest of the crew smiling at him with a mixture of kindness and pity, as if everyone knew that Cassie hadn't really meant it when she made him Acting Captain, and he was just a boy who ought to stay out of the way while the grown-ups sorted everything out.

A month ago, Tom would have agreed. A month ago, even a week ago, he'd never have dared talk back to anyone, let alone a pirate. Stay out of the way, be quiet, don't touch anything: that was life on Barnard's Reach. The
Onion
was the opposite. You jumped in, did something, anything, and if it went wrong, it didn't matter, because you could always do better next time.

Tom took off his glasses and gave Bill the full force of his librarian's glare. “I am a keeper of books,” he said. “A writer of stories. When I write down the story of this battle, what would you like me to write about you?”

Bill thought about it. The others all looked at the deck.

“We're not going to retreat,” said Tom. “Get ready with ropes. Keep the
Onion
behind that wave and be ready to start rescuing people. I think they're going to need it.”

Bill paused for a few seconds more, then saluted. “Aye, aye, Captain.”

And then the sky filled with birds.

It was as if every single bird that had ever nested on Barnard's Reach had chosen the same moment to take flight. They swept overhead: black gulls, white gulls, gulls of every color, screeching and cawing, their beaks open and their feet outstretched. Tom's heart leaped to see them. All the gulls of Barnard's Reach, and some of them still had canisters on their legs. Someone on the island must have let them free. He hoped it was his mother.

“What's happening?” Bill asked.

Tom laughed. “The seagulls are coming.” He shouted it: “The seagulls! The seagulls are coming!”

The flock parted as it reached the
Onion
and rose up high above the masts, and then, as if the birds somehow sensed an enemy that must be destroyed, they plunged down upon the
Antares
.

Trudi Storme was fighting six Ewan Hugheses when a seagull landed on the head of one of them.

The gull was momentarily surprised to find that the thing that had smelled so much like a fish was in the shape of a man. But on the other hand, nothing reminds you that you're really a fish like being attacked by a hungry predator. The Ewan reacted as any fish would. It thrashed wildly and tried to dive underwater, but there was no water, only the deck.

Trudi lowered her sword. The Ewans that had surrounded her a moment ago were gone. In their place, seagulls were pecking at … “Fish!” she shouted. “They're all
fish
.” Her eyes gleamed as she snatched up an extra sword. “Right! You lot are casserole.”

*   *   *

Brine barely dared breathe. Peter stood between her and Marfak West, and Brine could see Peter's hand shaking as he clutched the three pieces of starshell. Outside, Cassie and Ewan were still fighting for their lives against pirate copies.