Erin Hoffman - Sword of Fire and Sea

Vidarian shook his head, with a terse smile. “I won't pretend to understand temple politics.” He would have said more, but three tones from a brass bell atop ship cut him short. Setting the cup aside, he offered his hand to Ariadel. “If you'll excuse me?”

Her touch was like fire-not surprising, perhaps, if one had time to think about it. Vidarian hadn't. And like fire, it didn't let go easily. “Captain, I have little doubt that Endera tricked you into this.”

Vidarian laughed softly, dodging her earnestness by dint of a quick step backward and a respectful half-bow. “It was my own folly, Priestess, and I intend to make the most of it. The Quest and her crew have no equal on the sea, I promise you that.”

For the next two weeks Ariadel could rarely be seen abovedeck, plagued as she was with seasickness. Or it was certainly sickness, and certainly from the sea travel, but unlike any Vidarian had ever seen. She spent most of her time in meditation, and was friendly if demure at meals with the crew-she had even entirely won Marks, the cook, to her side by dint of her willingly shared Velinese cooking techniques.

No one on a Rulorat ship would be intimidated by ability, but Marks, an old stick of a ship's cook who had served under Vidarian's father, had a certain pronounced discomfort when it came to revealing admiration for the priestess's particular expertise. When pressed, he was a stoppered bottle uncorked-“And her knife skills, Captain-I know chaps'd pay good honest scratch at the academy to watch that woman shred ginger!”-but each admission came with guilt more worthy of an eastern cathedral. Because only Vidarian of all the crew knew that Marks had, in his youth, aspired to be a land chef in one of the imperial courts, he was the sole recipient of the cook's confessions, and so over the course of those first early weeks acquired, not quite willingly, a rather thorough education in the culinary comparison between the Velinese mainland and the sprawling southeastern empire.

When not administering jovial cooking lessons, and instead caught unsuspecting by a knock at her door, the priestess's eyes had a furtive look, pinched as if all the world were pressing down upon her. But by the third week she'd improved significantly, enough to explore the ship in earnest. While making the rounds one morning Vidarian noticed a suspicious amount of handiwork being done aft on the main deck: net weaving, sail patching, minor woodwork-someone had even hauled a barrel up from stowage for recaulking.

He found Ariadel at the eye of the storm, whispering to the lamps. The sight brought him up short, and he only realized he was staring when Calgrath, a spry and time-wrinkled topman who as far as Vidarian knew hadn't actually aged in a decade, addressed him in an awed mutter.

“Somethin’ else, ain't it, Cap'n? She been at it all morning-already fixed the row lights along the port corridor.” Vidarian almost quailed to hear the reverent note in Calgrath's voice; he'd seen the man stoically extract sea urchin spines from a cabin boy's foot, fight a pirate with only a flying jib to his back, and laugh through a storm that sent half a dozen salted sailors back to land permanently. In fifteen years only the moonlit glaciers of Val Morhan had awed him.

As the priestess whispered to each lamp, the cuffs of her velvet robe hiding her raised hands and obscuring her words, the flame within leapt up like a loyal puppy to a long-missed master. She left a trail of bright flames behind her, and yet with every invigorated flame the assembled crew collectively held its breath.

Vidarian cleared his throat sternly, and the spell was broken. Crewmen and -women jumped in startlement, then made a good show of shouting duties to one another as they returned to their assigned work. Vidarian did his part by glaring in dissatisfaction, but he couldn't help being relieved for all their sakes that it was him who caught them gawking and not Marielle. The first mate had been efficient and professional as always, but one swore the skyglass climbed whenever she and the priestess were within ten feet.

Having completed charming the lamps, the priestess was asking Revelle Amberwight, munitions lieutenant, about the location of the stored powder when Vidarian closed enough to make out her words. The officer colored, her high cheeks darkening, and made her apologies as Vidarian approached, claiming urgent duty on a staff inspection, or surely she would be glad to give the priestess a personal tour. It might even have been true. She saluted as she hurried past.

“Something I can help you with, Priestess?” Vidarian asked, to defuse the puzzlement on the priestess's delicate features.

“I'd thought to look over your powder,” she said, courteous but not masking her eagerness. The curiosity of the priestesshood was legendary; few he knew had much experience with the followers of Sharli, but by the priestess's demeanor he assumed they must be much like the Nistrans, endlessly fascinated with poking at their chosen element and documenting how it twitched. Merchant vessels rarely complained-their curiosity was a generous one, and filled many a captain's purse. “My temple has been studying the dwindling potency of firearms enhanced in the last decade. We believe we may have a remedy.”

“I am not, as you might imagine, anxious to see my ship turned into a laboratory,” he prevaricated, thinking of Marielle and swallowing his immediate hope and greed. It was true, what she said: the past two decades, not just one, had seen the accelerating decline of distance weapons. It meant closer battles, when they couldn't be avoided. Uglier ones.

“It could mean a great difference to your defenses,” the priestess argued, echoing his thought. “I am, of course, eager to lend any assistance I may for your crew's welfare, and my own.”

“You'll want a sea test,” he allowed. “A hand cannon would be enough.”

“It would suit perfectly,” she smiled.

The scuttlebutt flew quickly, as it always did. By the time Vidarian had collected a hand cannon and gauge, a collection of observers had gathered at the windward bow. Marielle, by fortune or her own design, was relieving the quartermaster at the helm and thus out of sight.

Ellara Stillwether, munitions officer, accompanied Revelle and the priestess, observing the process carefully. She and her lieutenant took careful measurements, assisted by Lifan, their little windreader. The priestess had been shocked at first to discover a child on board; Vidarian, in turn, had been surprised that she was unfamiliar with the custom. Lifan was Ellara's cousin, and fiercely guarded; Ellara herself had served as windreader on the Quest, when she could-the ability faded with the onset of adolescence. Ariadel assured them that no such parallel existed for fire, which typically appeared after adolescence if at all. For Lifan's part, she was as brightly intelligent as her protector, and showed a steady knack for figures that made Vidarian sure she would one day follow in Ellara's footsteps, if the land didn't lure her away.

After a full battery of initial calculations was complete, Ellara meticulously loaded the hand cannon, tamped it, laid its neck across a mark on the bow, and fired. The shot echoed over the calm water, and when it finally arced down to splash into the blue, Revelle called out a time and trajectory estimate.

As they prepared for the second shot, Ellara solemnly passed the flask of powder to the priestess. What followed was significantly more satisfying to the attentive eyes of the crew than her earlier performance with the lamps. On the deck she spread a linen cloth, and upon this spread a measure of powder. With her hands just above it, but never touching, she began a rhythmic chant, twitching her fingers to its beat. Vidarian would admit to no one that his own heart lurched when the powder began to glow; the gasps of the crew were enough.