But it worked. The Crown Prince smiled like a clenched fist suddenly opening. It was a much better effort than the last one I had seen: warm and bright. “My friends and my Mother call me Uldar.”
“May I call you that?”
He nodded fervently. “Of course. And I shall call you Theo. That’s pretty. I – ”
The music jangled to a discordant halt in the same instant that a scream rang out, shrill and echoing in the cold twilight.
“Sereh?” I whirled in the heavy circle of my skirts and hurried around the mast, Prince Uldar just behind me.
The deck before the bridge was a mass of people milling around confusedly – some of them kneeling by or bending over a single, fallen man. It was the Ice Breaker. His face was streaked with blood and he was struggling feebly. Some kind of fight? No, no, the blood was streaming, gushing from his nose. His eyes... They were white crescents beneath his half-closed eyelids. And it was Sereh kneeling on the deck beside him, silhouetted against the light of one of the lamps. She was holding his hands down.
He... He was having – some kind of. Of fit. He was having a fit.
I froze mid-stride, assaulted by a cascade of sense memories. My eyelids fluttered helplessly. The taste of apples, sweetly acidic, on the back of my tongue. The silvery crash of the sacred chalice hitting the marble flagstones, droplets of wine pattering across my bare feet. Aramin’s eyes, alight with triumph even as her cheeks paled in horror.
Light flashing from the rubies in Mother’s crown: “You are broken.”
Sereh looked up and met my gaze, her own face full of panic. “Princess! Help me! What should I do?”
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. I was frozen, unable to move or breathe, let alone speak.
Volin was pushing frantically through the crowd, shouting, staring at Prince Uldar: “He’s over-extended himself! The storm – ”
On the deck, the magician’s back stiffened into a tortured arch, then slumped. Limp, his hands slipped out from beneath Sereh’s, and his pale-lipped mouth went slack.
Every hair on my body suddenly crackled, lifting upright. At the edges of my awareness there was a soundless vibration that seemed to set the very air buzzing in my ears, and, not knowing why, I jerked my head up. Above the ship the swollen clouds were ripping asunder. Light pulsed and burned through them. In the distance the wind was rising, an immense, tearing howl, as vast as the far reaches of the sky itself, a sound like that of a sandstorm in full fury. Lightning slashed through the clouds toward the ship –
I was face down on the deck. I blinked frantically, eyes watering, vision striped with black and gold. Ears ringing with a roar of thunder that went on and on and on. Screaming. No, that wasn’t me. Someone else was screaming. More than one someone?
Hands were scrabbling at me, pulling at me. More shouting, close by. My head snapped to one side and my cheek went abruptly numb, then flooded with heat. A slap. I blinked again, hard, and a face swam into my sight.
“Come on! You have to get up – get up, we have to get to The Ice Blade!” It was Uldar. He was frantic, eyes wide and staring, hair straggling damply at his temples. The sky behind him was black as midnight...
He shook me, hard, until my gaze focused on him. “Theo! Wake up! The ship is on fire!”
4
Uldar dragged me to my feet in a graceless, gasping scramble. The world dipped and weaved around me, and I couldn’t get my breath. Sensations battered at me – thick, acrid smoke burning my throat and eyes, sounds like hundreds of mirrors shattering, a strange orange light that sent warped black shadows and sparks flying across my swimming vision...
Fire?
The ship was on fire?
I twisted in Uldar’s grasp and let out a cry of disbelief. The main mast had been cleaved asunder, fully half of it blasted away. The sails and ropes and rigging that were left hung in wild tangles of flame. The barrels of spirits and food crates strewn around had only added fuel to the conflagration. Squinting against the eye-searing brilliance of the fire I could see dark, motionless shapes scattered across the deck – but whether they were people or mere debris, I could not make out.
It must have been divine intervention that Uldar and I had emerged from that unscathed.
“My ladies – S-Sereh – ”
I tried to lurch away and Uldar’s grasp on my upper arms tightened to the point of pain, holding me back as I staggered in place. It took me a moment to realise that my knees hadn’t given way under the horror of what I saw. The ship was bucking in the water like a wild horse. Waves gushed up on both sides of the deck – met overhead – enveloped us. And broke.
Knocked flat by the impact and blinded by the foam, we washed across the deck in a tangle of trailing clothing and flailing limbs. Every layer – cloak, furs, gown and under gown – was instantly three times as heavy, sodden and cold as ice. Shudders racked my body. I wheezed. My nails tore, scrabbling for purchase on the planks of the deck.
My elbow and hip smacked into something, hard; the impact stopped me in place. I jerked out both hands frantically to catch hold of whatever had hit me. Steps. The steps to the raised deck. The ship’s wheel, spinning wildly, loomed above us. Beyond that, I saw the bow of the ship, rising against the black sky.
Uldar clambered off me, stumbled, skidded on his knees and made it to the bulwark, peering over. His face fell, then creased with fury. He smashed his fist into the brass rail. “No!”
“What?” I shrieked at him over the wailing wind.
“The Ice Blade is gone! I can’t see it – it must have torn free – ”
The Black Tern lurched violently. The deck tipped sideways. I began to slide again, this time in the opposite direction.
“Theo!” Uldar flung himself toward me, latching onto the sleeve of my outer robe. His other hand was wrapped around the brass rail. Face straining with effort, he leaned back, trying to drag me to him. I felt a seam at my shoulder tearing. The fabric began to give way. My toes and fingers scrabbled desperately, helplessly at the deck. Unsecured objects from the upper deck – a wooden barrel, a bucket, a book – tumbled past, narrowly missing us. They disappeared into the hungrily roaring fire.
If Uldar’s grip failed we would plunge straight down into those flames.
With an echoing groan, The Black Tern dropped.
Bottomless walls of dark water rose up around us as we sank down, down, down – the air vanished from my lungs and my stomach lurched as my body floated upward, suddenly weightless. Uldar let out a yell as he too came unmoored from the planks. Only his red-knuckled fist on the rail kept us from flying right off the deck.
The ship landed. I was rammed into the deck once more, submerged for a terrifying moment as another wave frothed over us. The wind was a shrill scream that made my ears feel numb. Uldar was crawling dazedly away, his grip on my sleeve lost. I floundered through the foam, flailing until my left hand found and clamped onto the brass rail.
The ship is going to sink. The ship is going to sink. We’re going into the water.
Fingers shaking and fumbling, still on my knees and clinging to the rail, I began to drag off my heavy, water-soaked robes.
“What are you doing?” Uldar demanded, his eyes almost popping out of his head as my body emerged from the layers of cloth. He seemed more alarmed by the sight of my soaked silk shift than the fire raging behind us, the unpredictable movements of the ship or the water crashing over the sides. I wanted to scream at him, but only a harsh croak emerged when I opened my mouth. It was only the two of us left. Everyone else was either dead or in the sea already. He had helped me. Now I had to help him.