Steel

Captain Cooper leaned over the side, screaming at her adversary, no matter that he couldn’t hear. “That’s it, run like the scurvy worm you are, you couldn’t board me and face me down like a real man because you’re a worm! A craven worm! Dirt under my shoe, Blane, wretched dirt under my shoe!” And so on, with hardly a breath between curses.

The air began to clear, and Jill’s legs turned soft, rubbery. She sat heavily on the deck, right where she was, under a shattered piece of mast and next to a smear of blood. Tipping her head back, she studied the changed landscape of the rigging. What had been smooth and arcing sail, taut rope, a functional pattern, was now chaos. The broken sails seemed tired, and the severed ropes swung back and forth, lazy and purposeless.

“Chain shot,” Henry said. He slumped down beside her, his legs folding as bonelessly as hers had. She looked at him blankly. Nodding toward the wounded rigging, he explained, “They weren’t trying to kill us dead. They weren’t firing all cannonball

s. They fired chain through the rigging to rip it all to pieces. So they could get away without us following them. Bloody curs.”

“What now?” Jill said. She thought she knew the answer: Wasn’t much else they could do but fix the sails and rigging, repair the ship, bandage the wounded, and continue on.

Henry shook his head. “Captain’s taking this personal. The crew might have a say about that if she’s not careful.”

Captain Cooper had run out of curses, though it had taken her awhile. Now she leaned one hand on the side and watched the Heart’s Revenge race away. The ship had receded back to the size of a toy bobbing on the horizon.

After the last hour, Jill was likely to approach any fight with Blane personally as well.

“Is it always like this? Every time you fight with another ship?”

His grin went crooked. “We hardly ever fight. That’s the trick. This…this is something else. There’s a war been brewing between the two captains. Since before my time here.”

“It’s not worth it. It can’t be,” she said. “Getting shot to pieces by cannonballs, spending the rest of the time waiting to be shot, dying here in a bleeding mess a million miles from anywhere.”

“Everyone dies, see,” Henry said. “I could do it here among friends, or on a merchant ship with a ruddy bastard for a captain getting whipped every day of my life. It’s worth it to me.”

She didn’t agree. Slumping back, she blinked up into the limp sails.

“Hey there, you’re hurt,” Henry said, and touched her arm.

Jill flinched away reflexively, skittish. But she looked down and saw her arm for the first time. It was bleeding. She hadn’t noticed it and couldn’t remember how it had happened. A gash sliced across her left bicep, tearing off half the sleeve of her shirt and biting into the flesh underneath. The wound gaped open and poured blood down her arm. Something must have cut it open when she fell, or some piece of flying debris must have knocked into her. How could she not have felt it happen?

Stress, adrenaline, distraction. Even now, looking at the split skin, it didn’t really hurt. But she suddenly wanted to faint as her stomach flipped over.

Henry pulled her arm back and started ripping off the sleeve.

“I don’t know how that happened, I don’t remember,” she murmured.

He took the piece of sleeve, wrapped it around the wound, and jerked it tight. She winced and bit back a shriek.

A scream from belowdecks echoed what she was feeling. It sounded like torture, and it didn’t stop.

“What’s that?” Jill said, suddenly upright and aware.

Henry’s mouth puckered, like he’d eaten something sour, and he wouldn’t look at her. “I’d guess the surgeon’s taking someone’s arm or leg off.”

“What?”

“Like as not someone broke an arm too badly to be set. Better to have it off,” Henry said, speaking casually, as if it didn’t matter, and staring at the open hatch.

Saul, whom she’d helped belowdecks—no, it couldn’t be him. He wasn’t hurt so badly. Was he? “But it was just broken, a broken arm can be fixed. It just needs to be set and bandaged.”

“It can’t be fixed,” he argued. “You try to tie it up, it’ll swell and get rotten. Then it’ll kill him. Better this way.”

Jill was standing now, a hand on her own bandaged arm, staring at the hatch, imagining the scene that was happening below. Maybe Henry was wrong, maybe the surgeon wasn’t really amputating Saul’s arm. Why would he? And without anesthetic, without drugs or hot water or antibiotics—it was a wonder these people weren’t all dead.

She was lucky she wasn’t dead. And what would happen to her if she stayed here much longer?

The screaming stopped, and after that terrible sound the ship seemed quiet. The sounds of people moving, calling to each other, pounding wood and throwing lines, seemed peaceful.

“Oy, Tadpole! You’re bleeding.”