Page 45 of Hijack the Seas: Seismic

“What was the problem?” Alphonse, who had been going at a good clip, his legs being considerably longer than mine, stopped to stare at me. “What was the problem? I’d held her guts in my hands was the damned problem! Felt her bleeding out all over me! Saw the agony and fear on her face and thought I’d lost her. Like Pritkin saw your dead body tonight, floating on the waves in a pool of blood.”

“Ah.”

“Yeah, ah. And from what I hear, that ain’t the only close call you’ve had recently. So, whether you get it or not, cut the guy some slack, alright? He’s not okay right now.”

Maybe not. But Alphonse had no idea of the kind of crap Pritkin and I had seen. This wasn’t our first time at the rodeo.

So, what was different now?

Maybe the answer was nothing. Maybe Pritkin was having a perfectly normal reaction to recent events, and I was the weirdo. It wouldn’t surprise me.

Alphonse took off down the corridor again, and I hurried to catch up. But not to continue the conversation, as I was too busy with my thoughts. None of which I liked.

Gertie’s training had taken place back in time and over months, too many to count as it had involved whizzing around in between the centuries half the time, when she decided that things were too tame in old London to challenge Agnes and me properly. I didn’t know how long it had been as a result, as the mind got confused after a while. But the body didn’t, and I’d needed three haircuts while there, all of which had been overdue.

And every day, she’d put me through the wringer, knowing that if she didn’t, someone else would. And that she wouldn’t be there to pull my butt out of the fire when I failed. It had been a harsh apprenticeship, and whenever I returned to my court, only a day or so after leaving from their point of view, it felt strange and left me off balance.

Like coming back to a place that I vaguely remembered, when another court and another time had started to feel like home.

Until the next attack came, as it always did, and then it felt okay. I felt okay because I had a new normal now, one of hypervigilance and constant fighting for my life, and . . . yeah. Maybe it was me who had changed.

Like tonight, when I was tired and hungry and had bruised my elbow somewhere in all that, to the point that it ached like a struck tuning fork. But other than that, I was fine. And I shouldn’t be. I should be . . . I didn’t know. But not this battle-hardened warrior thing I seemed to have going on. Because I wasn’t invulnerable, and I knew it.

Dying tends to bring that home real quick.

And I still made mistakes, although fewer than before, after having Agnes’ scornful laughter ringing in my ears. I’d made several tonight. I’d probably make more because that was what humans did, and mother’s blood notwithstanding, I had always been very human.

But the fey made mistakes, too. And, for that matter, so did war mages. Yet nobody said they couldn’t fight!

I remembered a story Pritkin had told me about a watering hole in Stratford where the Corpsmen went after particularly grim missions. It had a wall in a back room covered in the pins they received when promoted, which identified them as the Circle’s elite and which they never took off when on duty, any more than a police officer would go without their badge. And when one of them fell, their brothers-in-arms brought his pin back to that particular pub and put it on the wall, which had become an unofficial memorial for the fallen.

There were a lot more pins since the war began, some of which Pritkin had placed on that wall himself. Including the one belonging to Mac, his longtime partner, who had died protecting me. Pritkin had honored his sacrifice; he hadn’t tried to lock him up to keep him safe as he had me.

Because he didn’t know me anymore, I suddenly realized. He had been surprised to hear about one minor training exercise, something Gertie had thrown out on a weekend afternoon because we’d been getting on her nerves. It was nothing to some of the ones she’d planned, several of which I hadn’t been sure I’d come back from.

But he hadn’t seen those, had he? The months of hard training, the battles against ridiculous odds, the decisions I’d had to make alone. He hadn’t been there.

Maybe that was why he’d never questioned Agnes, Gertie’s heir and my predecessor. Because he’d met her when she was a majestic older woman with power to burn and a presence that could knock a man down at ten paces. He hadn’t seen her shlepping back to court clutching a pissed-off seagull with fish guts in her hair and murder on her mind.

But that had been part of her story, too. Part of the price we paid for the power we wielded. Part of the price I had been paying all these months to earn the right to the position I held.

I wasn’t a frightened, confused girl anymore, with more chutzpah than sense, who had somehow failed her way upward. I didn’t need another war mage to die protecting me. It was my job to die, if need be, to protect everyone else.

And keeping me back, like a queen on a chessboard that some newbie was too afraid to risk, was the best way I knew to lose. This was the war of all wars, and there was no sitting on the sidelines, no matter how much Pritkin might prefer it. I needed to be here, whether either of us liked it or not, and if I fell. . .

Well, I had an heir back at court, a brilliant Pythia-in-waiting who was furious with me for leaving her behind. Not so much because she feared for me but because she wanted to fight alongside me. She was as fierce as her mother, and yes, I recognized the irony in the fact that Agnes’ daughter would succeed me.

But it was comforting, too. She’d already had to act for me once and handled it with all the ability and grace I would have expected from someone of her bloodline. And if the worst happened, she would mourn me when the power came to her again, this time permanently, and then she’d get up and do the damned job.

Just as I had. And just as I would, whether or not anybody ever saw me as Pythia. Including my supposed partner!

“You okay?” Alphonse said, looking at me strangely.

“Yeah.” I cleared my throat. “Is what happened with Sal why you didn’t break Pritkin’s jaw?”

“Partly. And partly because he got a shield up before my fist hit him.” He shook his right hand and scowled. “I hate breaking the little bones. If they don’t heal back right, you gotta break ‘em again and start over.”

He banged his hand on the wall, and I tried not to wince at the crunching sounds.

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