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The pirate ship hurried towards them and Mari ordered Lyosha and the others to turn her ship and get them out of there. The engines roared but the pirate ship kept coming, growing larger in the windows. It seemed bulkier than Mari’s ship as if it was an older design or perhaps thrown together from disparate parts. The inflated envelope was sleeker, though. Narrower and shorter, but it must’ve been much longer. More needle shaped rather than the ovular design of Mari’s ship. But the biggest difference was the ship itself.
Where Mari’s ship reminded Emrys of a ship meant for sea, it clearly wasn’t. It was too small and too compact to be of any use in the water, but the pirate ship looked exactly as if it had been lifted straight out of the sea and grafted to the envelope. Salt stains along the hull made this plain. But this also meant the crew of the pirate ship may have been much larger.
As they turned away from the pirate ship, it disappeared behind them.
That made Emrys more nervous. He said, “Can we fire upon them?”
Lyosha said, “With what?”
“We’ve no weapons,” said Mari. “We’re researchers, Emrys.”
He turned to Fionnuala. “Magic then.”
Fionnuala said, “You want me to stand on the airship and, what exactly? Throw fire at that other ship?”
Emrys shrugged. “Yes.”
“Do you know what it is to kill?” She snorted. “Yet you ask me so cavalierly to kill however many men and women stand in that other ship.”
“They’re pirates!”
“Your father would say the same of Mari and her comrades.”
Mari cocked her head and looked at Fionnuala. “He was mistaken.”
“We shall see,” said Fionnuala.
A loud crash came from the back of the ship followed by a jerking motion, as if they were being yanked back through the air.
Lyosha shouted, “They’ve hooked us!”
Another loud crash and their ship began slowing even as the engines screamed. Lyosha grabbed an axe from the wall and ran back to the crew’s cabin. Emrys followed along with Claude who had grabbed an axe.
Emrys looked to the back of the cabin and saw sky through broken and splintered wood and the pirate’s ship so close he could have thrown something at it. Two wires thick as his leg connected the pirate ship to Mari’s. On either side of the door, their enormous metalheads stabbed into the wood of the airship.
Clause and Lyosha wasted no time attacking the wires but the axeheads were not sharp enough to cut through the metallic wires.
Emrys went to the arrowheads and tried to pull them from the wall but they were buried deep. Giving up on that, he stepped to the wire itself.
Emrys focused on the fire within him and built it rapidly, stoking it with fear and anger. He breathed through it, allowing it to inferno within him and then slowly pushed it through his arm and into his right hand. He placed it on the metal wire on the portside of the ship, which shook with every axe stroke, and held it there. Closing his eyes, he funneled more and more fire into his palm.
He couldn’t throw fire the way Fionnuala could, but he could burn. The metal wires seemed to loosen under his grip, Melting or dissolving.
Beneath the roar of the engines came a different noise. Like a bee. Like a thousand bees. A hundred thousand. It buzzed and seemed to vibrate his teeth in his skull even though he couldn’t see it. Couldn’t know what it was.
Some pirate weapon or magic.
Emrys opened his eyes and looked back towards the pirate ship. Something smaller flew across the openings. Not as big as the pirate ship or Mari’s airship. Maybe the size of a mule. But flying through the air. He kept pouring heat into the wire while Lyosha and Claude wailed away at it but he kept his eyes on those gaping holes at the back of the airship.
Lyosha shook his head, panting. He screamed something in that other language and Claude cursed in Faroise and Emrys swore in Graelish and kept burning. Smoke rose from his fist and he chose to believe it was the metal wire and not his own flesh burning away.
Fionnuala came through the door and shouted at him to stop but the back of the airship exploded inward at that moment. A loud, concussive bang that ripped sound out from Emrys, like he dunked his head underwater. For a moment, everything went black but Emrys remained standing, clinging to the wire now as it melted in his hand. Bitter smoke filled his mouth and lungs and he coughed and dust was in his mouth and a stabbing pain along the left side of his body. Splintered wood flew towards them like a thousand tiny knives. Most struck Lyosha and Claude, who stood between Emrys and the back of the room, the door to the main cabin. Some bounced uselessly off his clothes but some embedded in his bare arms, including a piece as large as his finger stabbing into his right forearm.
He stared at it, unsure how it got there. His mind blank after the explosion. The fire waning in his chest but still flaring in his hand.
The fire blew out of him and the wire dissolved under his hand as the smoke and dust choked him, causing him to clap his bleeding left hand over his mouth and nose.
The ship lurched and jolted, listing to the right rapidly as it became untethered. This threw all of them into the portside wall. Emrys went face first, seeing nothing. His head struck the wall and stars lit up in the dark behind his eyelids and he coughed and wheezed and that buzzing vibration in his teeth and then sound slowly returned with shouting and that cacophony of thousands of bees and another deafening eruption.
He opened his eyes and saw open sky behind him but no pirate ship. For the briefest moment, Emrys felt hopeful. The dust and smoke sucked out of the room and they stood there free. Lyosha stood with his arm looped around the wire still tethering them to the pirate ship. There was something wrong with his leg and Claude was nowhere to be seen. Fionnuala lay crumpled in a heap near his foot, her face awash in blood.
Emrys swallowed and bent down to touch her. She grunted and moaned. Alive, at least. She must’ve been thrown into the wall like him.
Then the buzzing shook within his chest and five black creatures entered the sky, each with four wings flapping rapidly like dragonflies. Big as horses but flying above the clouds, just like them. Each one had two figures on their backs. The figures were dressed in black, except for one who sat in a riot of colors.
The dragonflies moved rapidly and nimbly through the air, coming straight for them through the opening in the back of the ship.
Lyosha gripped his axe with one hand and the wire with the other. He swung it back and forth, shouting in his own language mixed with Faroise, as if daring them to come.
They came.
The first two flew straight into the open ship causing Lyosha to lurch backwards. He took a step back with his left leg and it buckled beneath him. He clung to the wire and tried to keep standing but the big man became slightly pathetic in front of Emrys. The axe he waved as a threat became a crutch that he pushed off of to keep standing.
The dragonflies were metal and had long leather saddles on top of a huge engine. Inside the ship, their wings slowed and became more visible. Made of some kind of hardened fabric or perhaps leather over a metal structure.
For a moment, Emrys wanted to go an examine them. As if these were not enemies flying through the sky to kill or take them.
The pirates hopped off the dragonfly and while two of them secured them to Mari’s ship with wires, the other two approached Lyosha. Tall and dressed all in ragged black loosely hanging from their bodies with masks covering their nose and mouths and hoods covering their heads. On the masks were embroidered skulls. Each pirate had some kind of metal instrument in their left hands. They walked with such confidence, though the back of the airship opened into fathoms of sky and miles of plummet.
Lyosha cursed and shouted and swung his axe.
Despite the roar of the engine and the wind and the buzzing dragonflies, Emrys thought he heard them laughing just out of Lyosha’s reach. The two pirates raised their left hands together towards him.
Lyosha reared back and threw his axe at them. A wild, desperate attack but it caught them off guard. The head of the axe struck the starboard pirate in the chest, knocking them off their feet and sliding towards the open air.
The other pirate screamed, “Caolin!”
If not for the dragonflies and the other two pirates, they may have been lost over the edge.
Emrys understood, only then, that Claude has fallen.
The pirate, seeing their companion safe, turned back to Lyosha and lifted their left hand and a deafening snap erupted from the metal weapon.
Emrys clapped his hands over his ears and shut his eyes tight against the eruption. But only for a moment. When he opened his eyes, though, Lyosha lay on the deck.
Dead.
Emrys swallowed. His ears ringing from the explosive weapon.
Claude and Lyosha were dead.
The pirates were on the ship.
Air pirates.
He nearly laughed at the absurdity of it all. He escaped home on an airship—something unfathomable to him in the autumn—only to have air pirates murder him high above the earth.
The pirates turned to him at the wall but seemed to consider him no threat. They didn’t raise their weapons at him or even approach.
Another dragonfly approached. On its back was the pirate of many colors.
Emrys looked down for Fionnuala but she was no longer at his feet. She had crawled towards the door where she now sat beside the doorway with a chunk of wood as big as a fist lodged into her shoulder. Breathing heavy, she clutched at her bleeding shoulder and stared up at the pirates.
The fourth pirate was back on their feet, rubbing at their chest where the axehead struck. The pirates ignored Emrys and Fionnuala, focused more on securing this empty room where Emrys had slept so recently. All his belongings gone out the back of the ship.
When the third dragonfly approached, the colorful pirate leapt from its back before it stopped moving. Fearing nothing.
That was Emrys’ first impression of the pirate.
Immediately, she ripped off her rainbow mask and hood to reveal the face of an older woman. Her face lined with wrinkles and her grey hair springing out like a cloud. She reached into her rainbow coat, which stretched down to her worn black leather boots, and pulled out a short comb with long teeth. She didn’t so much comb her hair as pick at it, forming the cloud of hair into a more circular shape.
Emrys gawked at her but she seemed not to notice or not to mind the attention. She replaced the comb in her inner pocket and pulled out a wide brimmed yellow hat. She smacked it against her thigh to give its shape back and then carefully placed it on her head, pulling it down tight over that cloud of hair, flattening the shape she made.
Emrys swallowed and fear gripped him. A new kind of terror.
“What we got here?” She spoke in heavily accented Graelish and looked down at Fionnuala. “An Eirish maid in the sky.” Then she laughed. A strained cackle roughened by age and some terrible use.
Fionnuala said nothing and Emrys wondered how the pirate could know.
The four pirates came closer with their weapons drawn.
Despite her age, she moved rapidly, spryly. She stepped past Fionnuala and into the main cabin, followed by two of the other pirates. “Hallo, my pretties!” She cackled. “Which one of you’s captain?”
Mari spoke in Faroise, “What right have you to attack me?”
Emrys didn’t move though he was desperate to see this encounter, to protect Mari in any way he could.
There was a pause and Mari repeated herself.
“I heard ya,” the pirate said in clumsy Faroise. “I can’t keep on in your tongue so we’ll cut to it. This your ship?” There was a pause. “Good. Mine now. Stop yanking away or I’ll kill every one of your crewmembers. You and your crew, or at least those still living, are mine too.”
“I do not consent to this.”
The captain laughed and called back to the other pirates. “Girls,” she said in Graelish, “says she don’t consent.”
The two standing over us laughed.
Shortly after, the motion of Mari’s airship relaxed and settled. When he looked back, he didn’t see the pirate ship. The wire still attached to Mari’s ship bent against the right side of the wide open, exploded back.
One of the pirates cocked her head at Emrys. She removed her mask and Emrys was struck by her beauty. Nothing delicate about her. Not like Mari. Neither was she like Cerys, who held a powerful kind of beauty. This pirate reminded Emrys of art left to weather in the rain or covered in a layer of dust and grime.
She was older than Mari. Perhaps Ariana’s age, and yet he could do nothing but stare at her.
The other pirate removed her mask and shared the same face as the other down to a mole on the left side of their noses.
Emrys only gaped at them.
The one on the left said, “We got some bleeders back here, ma.”
The rainbow pirate came back and looked from me to Fionnuala. She said, “Can you walk?”
Fionnuala responded in Eirish and the pirate laughed, responded in Eirish as well. It flowed from her easily, and Emrys understood where her accent came from. They kept on talking until the pirate laughed and turned to Emrys and spoke in her thick Graelish. “She says you don’t know nothin. That so?”
“She calls me a fool.”
“She did!” The pirate threw back her head and laughed. “I got room for fools but not cripples. You stand and come with us or I let you drop.” She nodded towards the back of the ship, to the sky. “Make a choice, Fool.”
Emrys stood and the twins motioned him to the back, to the dragonflies.
The pirate spoke in more Eirish and the twins went into the main cabin. Emrys tried to see what would happen but they returned with Benoit and Yana and Mari. All three of them bruised, with small wounds, but all of them well enough.
They were corralled near the open air, beside Lyosha’s dead body. Emrys felt the pull of the wind, the call of death.
When Yana saw Lyosha, she screamed and threw herself upon him. Ignoring the blood and the ruin, she stroked his face and spoke in that language they shared.
A language known to lovers.
She screamed and wailed until one of the twin kicked her away.
Yana cursed and threw herself at the pirate but Benoit wrapped his arms round her waist, yanked her away.
Emrys looked down at Lyosha’s lifeless body. His chest burned open, revealing the scorched meat within him. His eyes lifeless and blank. His animated, stern face slack and pale. He seemed to have shrunk in death.
His wound burned at his side but he ignored it. The lord of bone could wait.
With all of them gathered, the rainbow pirates smiled, stood with her legs wide and her arms akimbo. Behind her stood the twins. She spoke in Graelish, shouting over the engines, the wind, the buzzing fireflies. “Yall understand me, yeah?” She didn’t wait for a response. “Name’s Bronach. And, yes, I know what you’re thinking. Yes, it means sorrow and my ship’s called Wailing, and I’ll let you infer what that all means for each of you.” She threw her head back and laughed.
She thumbed towards one twin and then the other. “This is Siobhan and Sinead and, yes, I’ve heard the tales of women cursed to share a face but they don’t do so bad. You’ll meet the rest once we’re aboard.” She narrowed her eyes at Mari. “This is my ship now.” She smiled. “It’s a cute little fella. I always wanted one like this. Mine’s so big and imposing, you know. Scares the lads off.” She cackled wildly at her own joke.
Emrys muttered, “She’s insane.” He didn’t know if anyone heard him. If anyone could hear him over all the noise. He shivered there amidst the others, shaken by terror and misfortune. His wound burning at his side.
He looked down at Lyosha again and swallowed.
Bronach said, “I’ll give yall a choice, my pretties. You can come nice and peacely like or,” she gestured behind them, to the sky, “yall can drop. Or, well, your man here’s the third option.” She gestured to Lyosha’s body.
With a clap, she smiled. “All good? Made yall choice?”
Mari said, “What will you do with us?”
Bronach giggled, like a young girl. She approached Mari and cupped her small face. “That’s up to you a bit, yeah? You cause me trouble and I’ll dump your crewmembers one by one. I’ma keep you, though. You got the smell of money. Someone wants you back. Oh, aye, I can taste it in the air around you.” She narrowed her gaze at Emrys. “The Fool, too. He’ll be last to go.”
Emrys laughed. “I’m a bastard.”
“Aren’t we all,” said Bronach and she threw her head back and laughed. She turned to the twins and said, “Wasn’t I always sayin that I wanted a fool? Like a queen from a story in her court with fools and ladies and all that?”
“I don’t know, ma,” said Sinead or Siobhan and the other one said, “What’s a fool for?”
Bronach shook her head and turned back to Emrys. “My girls don’t read enough or listen to the bards well enough. Don’t even know about a proper queen’s court. You sing?”
Emrys swallowed. “Can.”
Bronach sighed and slapped him lightly on the cheek. “Fool needs a talent. We’ll train you real good. Don’t you worry about that.” She turned and walked back towards the door before facing them once more. “We good? Or a few of yall want to meet the earth again?”