Page 89 of The Queens and the Kings
Thunder split the air as clouds spilled their frothy forms forward. Her hair danced across her face, loose and wild. The wind shifted. Britt gasped when a blast knocked her sideways. Rolling to the left, her wings struggled to re-balance. Remembering again not to stall, she commanded them to take her closer to the helm, where the Captain shouted orders to his first mate.
She didn’t hear what they said, because the ocean itself paused.
The tempestuous, confused sea stalled. Giant swells and peaks shredded apart. A clearly westward current became a whirlpool. The ship of the line began to turn east with increasing confidence. Within moments, the ship nearly listed all the way on its side as the ocean swapped from west to east. No, not the whole ocean.
A lone current forming beneath the ship of the line. The waves themselves battled for this ship.
East.
West.
Neither.
Sailors tripped over themselves. As a giant wave crashed over the top, a sailor fell overboard. His scream cut short as he plunged into a wall of water. The ship tilted on top of the lost soul, dooming him to the locker.
Panic thickened the air as the sailors struggled to lower the sails. They flung their bodies into the hatches, ignoring the wyvern. The Captain released the wheel and abandoned his post, leaving the behemoth to its ill-fated luck.
Cowards.
From the mid-mast space, the wyvern clung to the wooden deck. Its claws gouged the wood, digging deeper. Britt surged over the ship, the wind in her eyes.
Despite the wind and water attempting to turn the ship east, an eerie line of brilliant green formed beneath the hull. Straight as an arrow, it cut west. The ship settled onto it with a bucking motion. In moments, the brilliant current grabbed the ship of the line and moved into the roiling storm.
Again.
A battle of two different arcane: one heading west, the other east.
Quicker than it should have been possible, the ship joined the steady current and plowed west yet again. The other force bore the ship in that direction.
Was it Pedr?
No. Why would he?
The wyvern, head tossing, wings flailing, gnawed uselessly at his chains. Rain sliced from the sky in needle-sharp plinks. Britt retreated to the wyvern, who would die if the ship swamped.Swearing under her breath, she raced on wings that buzzed. The strangely tensile membranes bore the rainy abuse.
No one saw her crash into the top of the deck. Pain ricocheted through her spine as she stumbled to her feet, fully visible again. One wing drooped, broken in half. It dangled at her hip. She clutched the gossamer strands, surprised to find them as fluid as silk. The arcane wings dissolved.
“Shite!” she breathed.
A wyvern wing soared over her head, just missing her. The great beast attempted to right itself as the ship tilted. She’d deal with her wing problem later. First, she had to free this blasted wyvern.
With her feet on the deck, her view became more overwhelming. Had the clouds from the west truly closed in so quickly? Had any riptide ever been this swift? Her stomach lurched with each movement. She shrieked, dodged a wyvern claw as it scudded toward her. They raked across the deck, stopping him just in time.
“Stop it!” she shouted as the wyvern’s tail nearly flicked her off the ship like a pesky fly. “I’m here to help you!”
The wyvern whirled. His beady black eyes connected with hers. The nostrils widened as he scented her through the rain, clearly seeing her for the first time. Up this close, a distinctive marking showed on the lower neck.
Veryfamiliarmarkings.
The grayish body, lackluster under normal circumstances, revealed the same markings she viewed on Kapurnick, the night a wyvern winged by. The web-like discolorations spread from the bottom of the neck and across the wings like tattoos. Their color difference was subtle. Without the help of close proximity both times, she might not have noticed.
She pointed to his legs. “I want to help!”
His eyes narrowed in suspicion. Tentative, both hands held upright, Britt took advantage of a calm moment. She dashed to the closest back leg. To the wyvern’s credit, he didn’t move. He peered at her as she gripped hold of the manacle and studied the chain.
“It can’t be that difficult,” she hissed. “They attached it in mere seconds. They’re lubbers, for arcane’s sake!”
The reddish, metal construction was nothing complicated. A round clasp, mostly. She had to hold down a lever to wiggle the chain free of the attachment point. The chain clattered to the deck, and the wyvern cried out as the manacle gave way. Whatever glowing arcane it once held had gone. Destroyed in the storm, maybe?
