Chasing the Lantern(2)

Lina glared at him. The coal of anger burned brighter. No. That part of her life was done, and long hair was a liability now, anyway. "No need," she said. Lina drew a long dagger from her belt, one of two knives taken from her old madam in severance. With her other hand she grabbed the back of her head and wadded her tresses into a thick mass. Growling, she cut, sawing through until the whole mess came free. Her head felt suddenly light. The ocean breeze tickled the now-bare skin at her neck. She swung the fistful of hair onto Oscar's lap. Strands like threads of gold fell down into the bilge of the boat, or flew away with the wind. "There," she said. "Have at it."

Everyone stared at her. Then the pirates broke out into laughter.

"She got you there, Oscar!"

"Good one, lass."

"Hey, Oscar, you lucked out. Now you can pretty up that ugly mug!"

The game over, the pirates all moved back to their places, chuckling to themselves. Oscar was the only one not amused. He glared at Lina, face dark. She ignored him and scuttled slowly back to her usual spot. Glancing back up towards the bow, Lina froze.

Striking green eyes held her. Fengel, captain of the pirate crew, was watching her. Even dehydrated and half dead from exposure, he sat with a stiff spine and a proud countenance, as if such fleshly concerns were beneath him. The pirate captain affected a short brown beard and mustache that his steward Henry Smalls trimmed every morning at dawn. He wore a broad tricorn hat and a golden monocle. Lina thought the latter ridiculous, yet still it somehow fit. Middle-aged and well-tanned in his tattered blue jacket, he was the very image of an officer in His Majesty's Royal Navy, which made his status as a notorious sky-pirate all the more incongruous.

Fengel's skin looked clammy and his eyes almost sunken. He gave a short, slow nod of approval, then turned back to face to the bow. As seemed to happen every time he looked her way, Lina felt butterflies in her stomach. She quashed it down and hunkered against the gunwales.

This whole idea was a mistake. He is not the reason I came. Prostitution in the machine-city of Triskelion had been an ugly life, and she'd been looking for a way out for a long time now. When Fengel's men passed through her bordello, airship destroyed and desperate to flee the city, she'd finally found one. That doesn't change the fact that I should have stuck to whoring. Even that beats dying of exposure, adrift on the open ocean. The crew all seemed confident that the captain knew where their home port was and could get them there, but Lina had never heard of anyone crossing the Atalian Sea in a weather balloon. And so far at least, they hadn’t.

With a sigh, Lina crossed her arms on the gunwale and rested her chin atop them. She regarded the ocean waves for what seemed the thousandth time. The bay back home was a dark green, and rather cold. Here the water was a deep cerulean, clear for a dozen fathoms below. Lina idly wondered if it would grow so clear she would be able to spy the very ocean floor, hundreds of feet beneath them. That seemed unlikely.

Something moved in the water just below her. It swam out from underneath their longboat only a few feet below the surface, wide and very long. Some huge fish? A shark? Lina had never seen any of the weird creatures that sailors sometimes talked about. This thing was as wide across as her armspan and covered in silver scales that shimmered in the daylight.

Her belly grumbled. Lina shook herself, realizing the opportunity. Fish or shark, it was still food. She half-turned to look back down the boat. "Hey," she hissed. "Hey. Anyone have a spear? Or a fishing line?"

Sarah Lome blinked at her sleepily from the opposite side of the boat. The woman was huge, seven feet tall and stocky. Her biceps were thicker than Lina's thighs. Lina didn’t think she’d ever be called pretty, especially with the sunburns she now wore, but no one would ever dare call her homely. "What? A spear?"

"Quick," said Lina. "There's a shark or something. A big fish. Just over the side."

The woman blinked at her again then leaned forward, with far more quickness than Lina thought someone her size should have. Her thick strawberry braid fell over her shoulder as she moved. "Where?"

Lina pointed over the side. "Just here," she said quietly, turning to peer back into the water. Then her mouth fell open and she stared.

The creature was still swimming out from under their boat, but now it curled down. What she'd thought a shark or fish was a massive serpent, thicker than her arms could stretch and at least thirty feet in length, growing longer with every passing second. Dimly, just at the edge of what she could see, Lina thought she spied the reptilian head of the thing.

Coming back up at them.

Lina turned back to the boat. "Serpent!" she yelled.