Page 51 of Tempest

“Nonsense, you are a lady of the Meridian, you should not stoop to cleaning,” Ryman shouted back over his shoulder. His nightshift was soiled at the collar, splattered with sick. “Captain Quine! I say, unhand me!”

Another sailor caught Ryman by the arm, bodily steering him around. But the lord slipped on the rain-slick deck, stumbling to his knees with a bray like a donkey. Cat felt her cheeks flush deeper, her embarrassment a roaring fire. She did not miss the look on Fell’s face either.

Pity.

I don’t pity the likes of you.

She did not know which she preferred. Fell’s pity, or the pirate’s disdain.

A few yards away, the officer wrestled Ryman to his feet. Somehow he had developed a nosebleed in the last thirty seconds.

She could hardly watch the shameful scene. Ryman whining for a servant and falling over himself. Another sailor of the Venerable running to escort the helpless lord below. Captain Quine at the helm, shaking his head with a look of disgust. And the storm beyond it all, black and green, still churning its way across the furious sea.

Lightning veined once more, crackling through the clouds. Guttural thunder followed, the distant force of it reverberating in Cat’s chest.

Then another light flared, lower this time, somewhere between the waves and the cloud bank. Barely above the waterline, or where the waterline should be.

Cat squinted at it.

It was a flash in the clouds, but not like a lightning bolt.

Like a—

“CANNON FIRE!” Fell roared, just as the sound reached the Venerable.

Not the distant rumble of thunder, but the sharp, brutal blast of gunpowder.

A cannonball whistled across the distance between storm and ship, hot iron burning through the air.

She barely had time to flinch, let alone brace.

Lieutenant Fell was faster, throwing out an arm, forcing Cat to duck against the deck. He did the same, his body pressed beside hers, his arm around her shoulders, his wet clothes soaking through her shift.

The whistle became a howl.

Through the cage of Fell’s arms, Cat looked up in time to see the cannonball careen past the forecastle and slam into the figurehead of the Venerable.

The ornate prow, a gold carving of the Meridian lion with a lantern sun in its paws, exploded in a storm of shimmering splinters. The legendary beast fell to ashes, the great symbol of the Empire destroyed in seconds. The lantern in the lion’s paws went too, flame spitting and hissing as it spiraled into the sea.

The force of the blow rocked the ship, and Cat’s stomach rocked with it. Her ears rang with the force of cannon fire.

Across the deck, the crew of the Venerable leapt to battle stations, whipped into a frenzy. Quine barked orders, his officers scuttling, his helmsman rapidly spinning the wheel. Sailors flew up the rigging, climbing to free the sails.

Cat expected Fell to stand, to follow orders. But he did not move, hovering over her, his silver eyes sweeping back and forth over the ship, and into the clouds, reading the distance between the Venerable and whoever lay in wait.

Whatever he saw, he did not like.

“Lieutenant,” she murmured, trying to stand despite the arm holding her down.

Again, it was useless to fight him. He did not move, his face a blank stone.

“Is the hurricane shooting at us?” Ryman wailed out, already forgotten in a heap.

Before anyone could answer the stupidest question ever asked upon a ship, there was another flash in the clouds.

And another.

And another.