The sea chariots and the skimmer closed on all of them.
Something enormous moved beneath the waves and Kip saw a tangled, coiled mass rising toward the surface with terrible speed.
And then the entire sea exploded into the sky.
Chapter 108
Teia’s skimmer hissed across the water in the darkness. Her right hand was clamped to the railing in a death grip as the boat skipped from wave to wave at great speed. She felt blind for several minutes, too tense to relax her eyes into sub-red and paryl. Terror was sufficient to dilate the pupils, but apparently mere crippling anxiety did not suffice. She looked around and saw that not a few of the others also had white-knuckled grips on the rail, but among the more dour expressions, not a few of the Blackguards were grinning eagerly, some at the amazing speed and the wind whipping their ears, others no doubt at the prospect of putting their training to the test. Most of the Blackguard runts had been kept back, just as Trainer Fisk had promised, but at the last moment, Commander Ironfist had decided that Teia’s gifts might serve a purpose.
Now she had to prove herself, and she wasn’t ready. She knew she wasn’t ready.
Gradually, she relaxed marginally. She realized her other hand was clenched on the front of her own tunic and on the vial she wore beneath it. She hadn’t gotten rid of it yet. Wouldn’t until the papers were signed and filed and the money sticks were in her hands. Somehow, it felt like it could still be snatched away from her. She’d do something today to disgrace herself, and the Blackguard would change its mind and reject her. She unclenched her fist and let the vial go.
There wasn’t much to see except misty waves and the rock looming ever higher in front of them. People were going to die here today, and Teia couldn’t help but have the premonition that she was going to be one of them.
They were approaching Ruic Head directly. The Head was five hundred feet tall, with only narrow goat tracks up the bare face of the cliffs on this side. They would be guarded, and a single alarm would be enough to doom the entire attack.
But Commander Ironfist seemed to know exactly what he was doing. He turned them north and approached the coast, then came back south, mere feet from the rocks. Then he brought them up against a rock. He squatted and the others came close. “There’s a dock two hundred paces from here around the corner. It’ll be guarded. I’m going to bring us to a spot forty paces from it. Tlatig, Tugertent, Buskin, you’re the best archers. String your bows.” The two Archers and the man did so immediately as the commander continued, “You’ll get up on the rock and take your shot from there. Teia, can you spot if the guards are wearing mail beneath their cloaks from forty paces?”
She nodded. “I could, but I don’t have enough paryl right now to…”
“Over there.” He pointed.
He continued giving orders to the others while a Blackguard showed Teia a tiny white mag torch. The woman beckoned Teia to sit cross-legged on the deck of the rocking skimmer. She draped several cloaks over her head.
“It’ll burn for ten seconds. If you need a second torch to fill up, let me know,” the woman said.
It felt odd to put on dark spectacles and then use a mag torch, but Teia knew even from her brief time with Magister Martaens that she couldn’t look directly at a mag torch without risking blindness, so she huddled down and snapped the tiny torch. It burned brilliantly, white-hot. She filled herself with paryl easily in a few seconds and had to wait while the tiny torch burned itself out. She knew such a thing must have cost a small fortune, and it seemed a waste. If she relaxed, even at night she could fill herself with paryl within a few minutes.
Then she realized that fifteen lives depended on that little torch, and that time was of the essence. Maybe not a waste after all.
When the tiny torch sputtered out, Teia came out. Having stared into the white-hot magnesium flame even indirectly, she was, she realized, completely night-blind now. She thought of forcing her eyes to relax, but maybe overcoming her body’s defenses wasn’t always best. The Blackguards had pulled out oars wrapped in wool and were paddling the skimmer slowly forward. They reached a rocky point that must have been what provided the protection from the sea for the dock beyond it. The waves, even on this calm morning, were such that the Blackguards had trouble keeping the boat in place. With the waves and the height of the good grips, Teia had to be helped up onto the top of the rock. The three archers were taller, even Buskin, who’d gained his nickname for wearing heeled shoes to compensate for his diminutive stature. They all came up nimbly.
Teia crawled forward to the top of the rock—and with the barest tread of leather to warn her, found herself staring at a boot less than a hand’s breadth away as a man stepped out from behind the rock outcropping. He saw her.