Chương 182: 21. Flames of Wrath 2

By the third day, I had become someone who was at least not actively obstructing operations. Morning rigging work completed without Blake shouting. Moving barrels without nearly baptizing my own feet with fresh water. Lov even produced a single "mm" after I correctly tied a rope cleat. It sounded less like approval and more like acceptable, I won't throw you overboard today—but on Tidesever, that probably qualified as high commendation.

The afternoon wind was gentler than the day before, the sea running smooth, and Tidesever slid along the wave crests like a very thin, very sharp arrow. I had a rare moment of free time and took out what I had privately named my "metal peanuts" to inspect them one by one. Each one was considerably heavier than an actual peanut, the brass casings catching clean cold light in the sun.

If I hadn't carried them out of that ancient base with my own hands, I would never have believed something this small could contain that much capacity for harm. Lov came over and crouched beside me.

"These are the ones?"

"Yes." She picked one up, frowning at it.

"This isn't just a projectile. It's a complete round in itself."

"That's my read too."

"The ancients were out of their minds." She returned it, and for the first time her voice carried something approaching reluctant admiration.

"Propellant, projectile, and primer all in one casing. If this thing actually fires cleanly..." She didn't finish. She didn't need to. If it fired, and fired repeatedly, then her flintlock and this pistol weren't different versions of the same weapon. They were different centuries of warfare. After a moment, I asked: "Do you think it still works?" Lov didn't answer immediately. She took the pistol, worked the slide, checked the return, examined the barrel and rifling, then said: "I don't know."

"That's unusually honest."

"Because it's not my equipment." She looked at me.

"But if the maintenance is good and the ammunition has been stored properly, it might be more reliable than what I'm carrying." I stared at her.

"You're serious."

"When do I look like I'm joking?" She had a point. This woman had essentially never joked. She handed it back and added: "Don't rush to test-fire it. Wind's too variable at sea, too much motion, and the ammunition is irreplaceable. When you fire the first shot, make sure it's worth something." I remembered that sentence for a long time afterward. Because she turned out to be right in ways that exceeded even her own estimate. The days that followed settled into a rhythm that was strange in its own specific way.

Days: work, get criticized, learn things, eat food that was unpleasant but sustaining. Nights: take turns watching the sea, exchanging conversations that had no nutritional value but somehow allowed people to decompress. Nico remained reliably insufferable. Blake remained reliably delighted by other people's misfortune. Lov remained a person whose every sentence arrived like ammunition.

And Marro moved through the ship like its shadow—not always visible, but the moment you looked up, you knew exactly where he was and exactly where the ship was heading. If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it. As for Ignicia and me—the atmosphere between us had, over these days at sea, become something quieter than before. Not distant. Something closer to a specific kind of natural.

Sometimes she stood at the bow watching the water while I sat at the stern cleaning the pistol and cartridges. Sometimes when the crew had run me ragged, she would pass by and right a rope bucket that was about to tip over—then walk away as though nothing had happened. Sometimes when I came back to the cabin after a half-watch on deck, I'd find her leaning against the porthole with her eyes closed, and she'd say, the moment I pushed the door open:"Your footsteps are too heavy."

This woman maintained active threat assessment even while resting. But because of exactly this, something gradually became clear to me. She wasn't a princess who needed protecting. At least, not the kind I had previously imagined. She was more like a dangerous creature that had taken a wound but was still standing taller than most things around her. And I had simply happened to be walking beside her since the moment she was most cornered. On the morning of the sixth day, the sea went wrong first.

Not a storm. Not heavy swells. A very strange kind of clean.

When I stood at the gunwale, my first thought was: the water is too empty today.

This stretch of the route should have shown at least a few small merchant vessels, fishing boats, even the distant outline of Dragon Kingdom outer patrol craft. There was nothing. From horizon to horizon: water, waves, wind, and a thread of light so distant it seemed almost false.

Nico had been trying to attract seabirds with leftover dried meat from the night before. He stood there for a long time. Not a single bird approached.

He looked down at the meat in his hand with an expression that was, for once, genuinely serious.

"... That's odd."

Blake had his single-barrel telescope up, scanning the forward sea line.

"The water's too clean out here."

Lov stood nearby, unhurried, clicking the powder case lid shut.

"Either there's blood ahead, or something that eats more than birds."

She said it so flatly that everyone went quiet for a moment.

Marro said nothing. He simply made two small adjustments to the bow heading, abandoned the most direct and fastest cutting line, and shifted to a course running slightly further south—harder wind, but wider sightlines.

Not lost. Defensive.

I walked to Ignicia at the bow. She was gripping the forward rail, eyes on the water ahead, a faint crease between her brows.

"You feel it too?" I said quietly.

She nodded.

"The current is wrong. Something ahead is deliberately blocking the water flow, forcing ships to change angle."

My chest tightened. If even she was saying it, this wasn't an old captain's overcaution. The sea itself was telling us something was there. About a quarter hour later, Blake swore.

"Contact." I turned. Through the thin mist at the horizon, what emerged first wasn't a sail. It was a shadow—too heavy, too large. It pushed out of the fog slowly, with absolute steadiness. Then sunlight found it, and revealed an impossibly tall stern castle, hull sides like battlements, and a figurehead at the bow carved into a snarling dragon's maw that looked prepared to swallow the ocean whole. A Yanxia Empire dragon ship. Not a merchant in disguise. Not a patrol vessel. A genuine heavy imperial warship.

Blake pressed the telescope back to his eye, his face going flat by degrees.

"Heavy imperial dragon ship. Single broadside, three decks..." He paused.

"Six guns per deck." Nico's dried meat nearly went into the ocean.

"Wait—what?"

"Eighteen." Blake's voice had gone dry as grinding stone.

"Eighteen guns, single broadside. Both sides combined: thirty-six." The entire deck went silent. Then Nico stared at the black floating fortress ahead and said, with complete sincerity: "What in all the hells did you people do to the Yanxia Empire? Did you seduce the Emperor's entire household?" Lov shouldered her flintlock without breaking stride.

"That's not seduction. That's a formation you send when someone's made the Emperor himself the wronged party." Two or three crew members laughed—the specific, helpless laughter of people who needed to release something in the half second before everything became serious. I couldn't produce a single sound. Because I understood clearly—you didn't deploy warships of this class for a routine inspection. Marro stared forward and said something low and profane.

"... They're not cutting corners on this one." And it wasn't finished. As Tidesever angled slightly left to avoid the direct forward lane the dragon ship had sealed, the ocean to starboard suddenly erupted in a low surge. Not one surge. Two. Three. Something that had been running flat against the surface, concealed until this moment, finally revealed its true shape.

"Starboard—!" Nico's shout.

"Port side too!" Blake spun to the opposite rail. Sea-dragon tribe gunboats. Far smaller than the imperial dragon ship, but far faster. Long, low-profile, their bows shaped like the intersection of fish bone and dragon spine—cutting through the water at a speed that didn't resemble normal sailing so much as something that had grown out of the ocean and was hunting. One cutting in from port, angling hard. Two from starboard, offset to bracket our flanks. Ahead: the imperial dragon ship, a wall.

Left and right: sea-dragon gunboats, blades. Tidesever was boxed. Ignicia's expression, for the first time, went genuinely cold. She fixed on the sea-dragon clan banner hanging below the mast of the nearest gunboat, and her voice came out like water from a crack in ocean-floor stone.

"This isn't an inspection," she said.

"They came for me."