The Ruins

Chapter 3

It was a world apart from how he had looked a few weeks ago, when he was still captain of the Hood.

He stood at the prow of his ship, spyglass out, staring after the roar of distant cannons. His face was pale, his brow furrowed, and he was breathing in the tightly controlled rhythm artillerymen used to slow their heartbeat and steady their hands.

And when Captain Locklear finally folded his spyglass, she could see the fury in his eyes. It wasn't the hot rage she had seen in bars, or on the deck of a pirate skiff as they boarded it. The hand that fell to his sword didn't shake, his jaw wasn't clenched, there was no strain to control or even manage the anger he felt. Locklear's fury was ice cold; less a man being consumed by his rage, and more a man deliberately holding it like a weapon.

"All ahead full," the captain had said, without looking back at her. He knew where she was, knew precisely how loudly he needed to speak. And he knew exactly what orders he needed to give. "We sail to the sound of the guns."

"Most people have never, and will never, burn toast and porridge," Mercy replied, to cover up her uncomfortable recollections. "But let's get back to my original point for a moment. Asides from your ongoing series of culinary calamities, what are you actually bad at? Your skills in mechanics could have gotten you a posting with the Admiralty's Shipwrights. You had a standing invitation to the War Games Hall. And, whatever else was said about your dismissal, no one was unimpressed with how you brought down a hundred-gun ship of the line with a sixteen gun sloop."

"I am terrible at belonging," Vincent admitted. Even though he smiled, Mercy couldn't see any humour or warmth on his face. "So far, I've been thrown out of every home I've ever had. My family left me on the streets of Vol Ayre when I was fifteen. The navy has kicked me to the curb. You're the closest thing I have to a people. You and Artége."

Mercy flinched at the mention of Olive Artége, and she touched the scar on her face with her hand. The woman Vincent mentioned ran a boudoir in Vol Ayre, and was mistress to a small company's worth of girls who served and serviced the rich and wealthy of Volante. It was only the woman's strange friendship with Vincent that allowed Mercy to be civil around her.

Olive Artége sustained a way-of-life Mercy had scarred herself to refuse.

"I suppose you weren't close to many people you didn't give orders to," Mercy said. "That was a strength when it mattered."

Mercy looked through her own spyglass, and what she saw left her cold.

A small ship was belching smoke from its engines, and one of its sails had been cut away. Its lift balloon was now stained on the bottom, painted with grey and black soot from the smoke. The ship flew a now tattered flag of grey over green; the colours of the Monastery.

And in pursuit, a behemoth.

A warship taller than many buildings in Vol Ayre, with three decks of guns jutting from the sides, a lift balloon larger than some of the tiny isles smugglers used as hideaways, and a half-dozen massive propellers that churned the nearby wisps of cloud. A hundred guns rode on that massive craft; firepower enough to bring nearly any city-isle under the sky to its knees.

Worse still, even though the ship flew no colours, Mercy recognized it. The Victorious, one of Volante's prized ships of the line.

"That's one of ours, chasing the Monastery vessel. But why isn't it flying our colours?" Mercy had asked. She hadn't looked before she spoke and was surprised to find that he had moved.

The captain was at the bow, with a small mirror in his hand, turning it in a rapid series of short tilts, using the reflection of the sun to signal a message. At the time, she had at first thought he was signalling the Victorious, asking why it was attacking the other ship. The Monastery ship had no weapons, and the crew was barely keeping the fires under control.