“I saw you fall,” he says. “I wouldn’t have gotten to you in time if you and Milekt hadn’t sung. I thought you were gone.”
I’m shaking and shaken. So is he. His arms wrap around me, and mine around him, and—
Rostrae all around us—the birds from my ship, led by Jik, some of them midtransformation, their arms half feathered.
The spotted wings of the sparrow, the golden brown feathers of the eagle-woman. The hummingbird a buzzing dart.
My crew. They’re saving me.
Dai takes my hand.
“You’re pretty good with the mop handle,” he says, and for a second, I’m laughing, and I don’t know why. I’m shaking with adrenaline, wobbling and surging and I want to sing and fly and battle some more.
The Rostrae lift our launch boat up, through the fog and white again, through clouds scented with lightning, and into the shadow of the ship.
I look down at the deck of the Amina Pennarum as we rise up to its level. I look at Dai.
His face goes ashen. All over the deck, there are dead bodies and when I look around, in disbelief, I see our crew has lost.
Blood and feathers and gore, and the pirates—now I finally get a look at them, are all over the place—a group of ragged Magonians and Rostrae. They hurl ropes around us the moment our launch is in reach, and yank us down, and we don’t have time to do anything. I’m grabbed by a big pirate, my arms wrenched behind my back, and Dai is too.
Zal’s tied up, bloody faced. I see her see me, and take in a gasping breath of relief. Wedda’s near her, and half the crew, many of them wounded.
“A trap,” Zal spits at the pirate captain, whose back is to me. “It is against the laws of the sky to tempt a ship toward false rescue. You killed that captain and crew to summon me under their signal, and no doubt they were innocent. I’d expect as much from you.”
The pirate turns toward Zal. She has long gray hair, twisted into ropes of knots, nothing like Zal’s pattern. These are a whole other kind of complicated.
What would normally be the whites of her eyes are dark blue. The sides of her cheeks draw up as though there’re strings attached to them, and maybe someone’s trying to make her smile, but she’s baring her teeth instead. She’s thin in a way that looks hungry, not purposeful. Her face is sunken. She’s wearing a tight uniform, but it’s got tears and bare spots all over it.
“Where are you heading, Zal Quel? We’ve heard rumors you brought something lost up from below. You don’t sail as invisibly as you imagine. We knew which quadrant you flew in, and the sky? It whispers. I heard a rumor among the corsairs that you’d brought a girl aboard,” she says. “Where is she?”
Dai makes the mistake of glancing at me.
The pirate captain’s head whips around and she looks at me too. A blade is suddenly at my throat. I feel its edge. I’m holding my breath, panicking.
“Identify yourself,” the captain of the pirates bellows into my face.
“Don’t,” says Zal, nearly levitating with rage, and with something else too. Fear? “You owe her nothing. Keep silent, Amina Pennarum crew. If we plank-walk, we do it without words.”
The pirate captain looks closely at me, examining me, and I feel like prey. Dizzy and tiny, skinny, unmuscled, and powerless.
She pokes me in the chin with her sword, and it doesn’t tickle. It hurts.
“Who was that singing, girl? Was it you? This boy leapt off the ship midbattle to bring you up, and Amina Pennarum’s Rostrae saved you. You are not what you seem. No, I think you’re much more.”
I see Zal signaling with her eyes, willing me not to say anything, not to tell them anything.
“It was me singing,” says Dai, and steps forward. The pirate captain looks at him dismissively.
“No male could sing that powerfully,” she says.
One of our masts is broken. The batsail looks wild-eyed and furious, though it’s uninjured, and it shrills at me wordlessly. I hear an echoing wail up from belowdecks as well, the ghostly bird screaming a hoarse call. This ship, and everyone on it, is in danger.
I still don’t even have a sword.
I swallow. Milekt rattles inside my chest, angry and still feeling the song we sang, just as I am. I take a step forward. I inhale, and I feel Milekt opening his beak too—
Dai jabs me in the ribs with his elbow.
“Yes. You’re right. I’m the Captain’s Daughter,” I blurt, instead of singing. I see Zal struggling against her bonds.
The pirate looks at me. I can’t get a read on every emotion that flits across her face, but there’s relief. Sorrow. Anger. Guilt.
“Of course you are. Aza Ray, daughter of Zal,” she says simply. “So the rumors were true. You’re why we’re here.”
The pirate captain seems weirdly more familiar the more I look at her, and I shudder.
“I’m Captain Ley Fol. It was me who left you among the drowners, long ago.”
Zal shouts from across the deck, “Stay away from her, murderer! Betrayer!”
“Betrayer? I turned my back on your insanity,” says Ley Fol.
“You turned me in,” Zal spits. She’s frenzied, and there’s still a sword to my throat. I can’t sing, though Milekt is battering me from the inside, raging. I’m trying to understand what the hell is going on.
“I’ve no more love for Maganwetar than you do, but you’d have brought disaster on us all.”