"Nikronallia," she said again, this time with quiet surprise.
"Your time is through," he answered, his voice raspy, still touching his head with his free hand. With a gesture toward J'role, he said, "You let this thing …," then gave a great sob, and lowered his hand from his head. "I want you dead, so very, very badly." He laughed, as if his words both surprised and amused him, and three other sailors drew their blades.
The mutineers looked at Nikronallia oddly, as if they knew something had gone wrong.
But this was obviously the start of the mutiny.
"What?" asked the captain, thoroughly baffled. "What are you talking about?"
Ignoring her, Nikronallia said to himself, "No, not yet. Not yet." He looked around, confused. "We're supposed to … tonight …"
The captain looked down at J'role, and he nodded back to her. She understood. He relaxed and rolled onto his back as Captain Patrochian drew her blades. Then he heard the sound of someone screaming a battle cry and the fight began.
24
He did not throw stones at his mother, though in the nightmare he does. In the nightmare the stones are sharp and rough against his hand, and he feels them rub his flesh raw.
Blood pours forth. He hurls the stones at his mother, and as the stones float for that singular, frozen, nightmare eternity arc of fall, each one drips his blood.
The stones are still in the air, yet forever moving toward his mother the strange paradox that only dreams can allow. The stretching of time makes J'role anxious in his sleep, as if he himself is falling forever, toward a pit bottom he cannot see. All he wants is for the stone to reach its destination; his life is stuck as the stone floats along its never-ending path.
"Move him!" Captain Patrochian shouted to Releana, leaping forward to engage the mutineers in swordplay. Her sword clacked sharply against Nikronallia’s, then she parried one of the mutineer's blows. Voponis engaged the other two mutineers, and the deck became a flurry of silver swishes of swordplay.
Releana ignored the captain's instructions, preferring to aid her instead. She waved her hands, then cupped them, palms facing forward. Frost formed on her hands, then a spear of ice appeared from out of her cupped hands and flew toward the mutineer who fought alongside Nikronallia. Sparkling in the sun, flakes of ice trailed the spear, then floated down to the deck. J'role, prone and helpless on the deck, looked up at the sight, thinking.
"How beautiful,” even though he knew the observation made no sense at the moment.
Releana's spear drove deep into the mutineer's chest. His clawed green hands flew wide as he screamed and fell back on the deck. The spear shattered, sending chunks of ice skittering around his corpse.
Seeing his companion fall, Nikronallia made a panicked stab at the captain.
She parried, smiling, her triangular teeth nearly ghoulish in her love of the fight. Off Nikronallia pulled back, then lunged once more, his breath forced from his lungs in an angry hiss.
The captain parried again, then added a riposte that Nikronallia parried just before the captain's blade would have sliced through his shoulder.
Meanwhile Voponis drove the other two mutineers across the deck. The swordplay was fast and sometimes the three rapiers seemed no more than a momentary sparkle of wind, somehow magically induced to reveal itself for one extraordinary moment.
With a sudden switch in tactics, Voponis laughed with tremendous bravado, brought his rapier up and under the sword of his opponents, swung his weapon in a wide arc and sent each of the other t'skrang's swords flying off the edge of the ship. The two sailors stood stunned for a moment, then Voponis slashed the air harshly with his blade. Both sailors gasped and jumped back, vanishing from sight over the edge of the ship, splashing into the water below.
Nikronallia saw all this and gave up his fight with Captain Patrochian. Running for a rope attached to a swinging mast, he jumped for it. With one hand on the rope and the other slashing his sword through the air, he swung over the ship shouting, "Now! A call to arms! Follow me! The time to strike is now!"
The captain almost followed, rushing toward another rope, but Voponis caught her arm and spoke quickly in the t'skrang tongue. She looked at J'role, taking in the whole truth of what he'd wanted to warn her about: it was not four sailors who had mutinied, but the entire ship. She would need a plan. She nodded, crossed to J'role, add helped him up.
"We've got to get to the engine room," she said. "If we can take it before the mutineers do, we'll still be in control. Come. We'll use the interior passages. Less obvious that way."
The four of them moved quickly down the steps, across the descending decks, through the winding corridors. Voponis and Releana helped J'role, and the captain went ahead.
Hearing shouts ringing through the ship, they came across two corpses. "They probably refused to join the mutiny" Voponis- said sadly.
Minutes later they came across a fight between five sailors; three against two. When sailors noticed the captain and the others, the group of three turned and ran, pursued momentarily by the other two sailors until the captain called the loyalists back. Their numbers thus strengthened, they continued toward the engine room.
They were almost there when Voponis said, "Despair. . Grim's father!”
J’role remembered Garlthik's desire to have Bevarden killed.
“We can't split up now," the captain said. "We've got to take the engine room. If we succeed at that, we'll decide what to do next."
Releana looked at J'role as if ready to comfort him, but he killed all his feelings, kept his face stony.
As they continued on, the only other individual they encountered was the ship's questor of Garlen, who also joined the group. "I saw three crew members killed in their sleep," he said. "I awoke just in time, saw the murders, and ran off. The ship is hosting a bloodbath." He glanced at J'role's chest as they walked. "I'll tend to that as soon as we're settled,” he said. "You'll be fine."
A terrible feeling came to J'role as they walked down the last corridor. If the engine room was so vital, shouldn't they have encountered trouble by now? But they had not. He suspected that the delayed trouble would be even worse. Though no one spoke of it, the others must have been feeling the same. Their bodies had become more tense, and their rapiers quivered in their hands.
Reaching the door to the engine room, everyone took up a combative stance after they set J'role a few feet back on the floor.
A hesitation. Thoughts evoking the passions of Thystonius and Floranuus. The thrum of the engine grinding the arms that pushed the paddle wheel.
Voponis stepped forward, opened the door.
Through the crowd of legs J'role spotted the engine room's magician. He turned from the engine, slowly, looking surprised. "What? What is it?" he asked.
Everyone relaxed, and in that moment the wizard raised his arms and a ball of fire erupted from his hands.
"Down!" Voponis cried, and even as they all fell back, the fireball rushed across the engine room and caught Voponis full in the chest. He screamed out, and a spray of flames cut down the corridor and splashed over J'role's head.
The captain shouted "NO!" The acrid smell of burnt flesh cu through J'role's senses.
Releana, screaming with wordless rage, leaped to her feet and faced the t'skrang magician. She dug her hand into a pouch on her belt and produced a pinch of dirt, which she threw into the air before her. She cast her spell and the dirt seemed momentarily suspended. The magician was in the midst of preparing another spell when he looked up, saw what Releana was doing, and gasped. Even as he was deciding which way to run, the dirt before Releana transformed into crystalline needles that shot through the air and slammed into the magician's face. The needles ripped through his green scales and pocked him with bright red wounds. He stood still for a moment eyes hidden beneath the blood then fell forward, dead.