Erin Hoffman - Sword of Fire and Sea

Gradually the glow faded, and the priestess tipped the powder back into its flask by rolling the linen into a funnel. She handed the flask back to Ellara, who accepted it with reverence barely masked by her outward veneer of skepticism, and wadded the linen away into a pocket, of which her robe seemed to contain many.

Without ceremony Ellara directed Revelle and Lifan to take their readings again, and they complied swiftly. Then Ellara loaded the cannon once more, her movements as measured and diligent as if she were at her officer's test again.

The crew erupted in a furor as the shot sailed out across the water, easily a third again the distance of the first. Some whooped with delight, others murmured appreciation or amazement-and above them all, Ellara voiced a strident cry that checked the others. “Captain! Our calculations!” Her dark eyes were flinty with concern, darting as they doubtless racked through the hundreds of adjustments that the priestess's powder implied for their defenses.

“Ms. Amberwight,” Vidarian spoke without turning from the water. “My quarters. You'll find a red leather book on the third shelf. Fetch it, please.” The priestess's head tilted in inquiry as the lieutenant saluted and hurried off. “My grandfather's log,” he explained. “He had a fascination with munitions. The middle section is entirely devoted to trajectory calculation tables. Outdated, we thought, even in my father's time.” He laughed.

In moments Revelle had returned with the requested volume. She offered it to Vidarian, but he gestured instead to Ellara, who looked about ready to pounce. Or explode. She was too professional-narrowly-to seize it from her lieutenant's unprepared hands, but neither did she waste time in finding the page Vidarian directed her to.

“The measurement is quite close,” Ellara said, her eyes intense on the text when they weren't darting to her wax tablet for comparison. “We'll want to run more tests…”

“There should be enough of the new powder for several,” Ariadel offered. She seemed slightly fatigued, but satisfied as a housecat, leaning against the bow.

The sun was beginning to drop over the water to the leeward side, and here the forecastle cast a long shadow that just reached them. Celer, one of the two cabin boys, had fetched a lamp and now bore it up near them, a fine excuse to get a close-up look at the powder that his height had not previously afforded. A glint from the priestess's hands caught Vidarian's eye; a pale blue residue clung to her palms. Vidarian wouldn't have noticed it if not for the flickering lamp, but as she lifted her hand, the residue glittered like powdered graphite. And yet she had not touched the powder.

“The tests, I'm afraid, should rightly wait for tomorrow, and daylight,” Vidarian said, and though both Ellara and Revelle looked as though they'd like to object, they could hardly slow the sun, and quelled their objections. Ellara surely was mentally concocting some way to float lamps on the sea's surface so as to prolong the experiment, but she would have to settle for poring over the elder Rulorat's book into the deep hours of the night, as she doubtless would.

“Priestess, if I may?” Calgrath offered, and Vidarian turned to him in surprise. He gave a little bow, excusing himself, but continued, “Our medical kit? Surely-”

“It would take a trained specialist in the medical arts to adjust those. I dare not risk imbalancing them,” Ariadel apologized, and added, “I'm sure your ship's mender has them in the best condition possible.” This won a smile from the old seaman; the priestess could not know that the mender in question, currently on a watch shift if Vidarian recalled the day roster, was Calgrath's younger brother-in-law; but the keenness in the old man's eye when it came to medicine should have told her enough.

“Priestess, a word, at your convenience?” Vidarian ventured, and Calgrath bowed himself away.

“Of course, Captain.”

Back in the wood-varnish embrace of the forecastle anteroom, Vidarian sat quietly, not speaking, while Marielle, off from her shift at the helm, delivered the familiar silver tea service from the galley, almost certainly prompted by Marks. The grey kitten, which had been confined to the forecastle after three times managing to raid the galley (and nearly losing its life to the cook on the third) slept soundly, curled on a brocaded chair.

“Will you be liking anything else?” Marielle asked coolly, once she'd settled the tray. She was a scant degree off, in the angle of her hips, from bodychecking the priestess, as if to deny her presence.

“No, thank you, Ms. Solandt.”

“Very good, sir,” she nodded, and finally spared a glance for the priestess, out of protocol. “Nistra's peace.” She bowed, and left, shutting the door behind her.

The priestess permitted herself a soft laugh once the door was safely closed.

“Something amuses you, Priestess?” Vidarian couldn't quite keep the frost out of his tone.

Her laughter stilled. “Just an odd expression, it strikes me,” she said, and leaned forward, folding her hands self-consciously. “It seems I've done something to offend you, Captain.”

“Only insofar as you've been playing tricks on my crew, Priestess,” Vidarian said. “Neither they, nor I, deserve such.”

The priestess's eyes widened; her etiquette training surely did not cover direct confrontation. Better, Vidarian thought, that she learn sea ways quickly-he reined in his anger to a cold implacability, but was startled, himself, to find that there was disappointment there as well.

When she didn't answer, Vidarian continued, “There was something on your hands. You added it to the powder.”

She stiffened. “I said that we had a remedy, not that it was supernatural.”

“But the chanting, the hand-waving, the glowing. The lamps. Trickery, yes?” As he spoke he heard his father's anger in his own voice, the rumble of distant thunder.

“They're not fairly ‘tricks,'” the priestess insisted hotly. “They do work.” Now her hands came together under the cuffs of the robe, vanishing.

“But it's nothing to do with elemental manipulation.”

“It's nothing to do with my elemental ability,” she corrected, but reluctantly, a deer brought to bay. “It is manipulation.”

“Why?” he asked simply.

She surprised him by sliding to her feet, rising gracefully as a courtier. She inspected her upturned palms ruefully, then brushed them against the velvet robe. A pang of uneasy guilt shot through him at the distressed curve of her shoulders, the set of her jaw. He'd meant to chasten her, to demand forthrightness, but not to wound her. “I've never been skilled with the necessary deceptions,” she sighed.

“Necessary?” His voice was sharp again, and he took a deep breath. “Why should deception be necessary?” he continued, willing his grandmother's civility, calling up arduous etiquette lessons from his childhood.

She turned, the robe swaying gracefully with her, but with more weight, his sharper eye concluded, than velvet should account for. “Your people have noticed the fading of your tools, you've said as much yourself-over decades.” He nodded, but rather than pursuing her case, the priestess bafflingly turned away again, and then back to him. She searched for something in his eyes, boring into him until he could feel his cheeks heating. “What I'm about to say would have me confined to Sher'azar for a decade, if Endera or anyone else found out,” she began, but now that she had committed this much did not hesitate. “The tools aren't simply fading. Our ability to manipulate the elements has also been dwindling-not merely for decades, but for the better part of a century.”

A cold fist of dread clenched in his stomach. “The sea wars-”