“Well, Emalee is with me every day.” Pyrena sat up in bed.
Jinny turned and tried not to stare.
“She’s only seven years old.” Pyrena gestured at the winged creature on the perch. “She visits her father when our travels take us near Oriab Isle.” Then her smile faded and her voice filled with sorrow. “Before her, there was Babette.” She touched her red jeweled ring. “Babette was taken on her thirteenth birthday. I lost her in the market crowd in Dylath-Leen. I searched for hours and came to the docks just as they pulled her wailing aboard a black ship.” Her forest eyes burned brilliant with tears and resolution. “Two years later they tried to sell me a ruby in the same marketplace. The stone screamed to me. I stole it and ran.”
“And her father?”
“I was pregnant when I arrived here. He never followed.”
Jinny returned to bed, her body shaking with fury. “Pyrena. I will help you to change the tide.” But even after her lover’s breathing calmed, she did not sleep.
They trained and sparred for hours each day. In time, Jinny learned not just to swing, but a dexterous flow with many swords: epée, cutlass, spadroon, and hwandudaedo. She learned to spin and hook the crow’s bill pickaxe, strike fast with lathi sticks, make sing and snap the qijiebian chain whip, and hurl from bow to stern the barb-tipped sibat spear, planting it squarely into a penny’s face. The weapon with which she forged the strongest bond was the forward-curved panabas axe; it became an artful extension of her arm, and of her emboldened will.
Captain Bloodrose’s bedside cabinet contained many lewd implements that Jinny also learned to wield, from the clockwork resonating slender (in both manual and wearable forms) to the undulating mollusk glove, from the incandescent feather to the pulsing lambency baton. On one voyage Pyrena diverted their course to the cultured city of Celephais, where she procured a few customized items from her favorite shop.
On the days that followed those late nights of pleasure, the combat training seemed doubly fierce.
On her twenty-firstraid, boarding a black biota cargo ship east of the Sunken City, the two war dames of the Arkham Rose swung each other by the arm into the melee, placing themselves back to back and laughing as they traded foes, when Jinny noticed the sparse crew, many of whom fled overboard. The exchange finished quickly.
It took the mauls of two crewmen to break the lock on the hold. Before the latch was lifted, the hatch erupted open and a giant shaggy beast roared onto the spar deck.
Covered in dreadful black fur and serpentine scales, taller than three men, it brayed glottal rage at the sun through a vertically split mouth of gnashing yellow teeth. Whipping two powerful arms that ended in four taloned claws, it rent a sail and bludgeoned a dozen fighters, sending them rolling across the deck in a volley of snapping bones.
They tried to drive the brute back with spears and atlatls, but the behemoth stormed across the deck, great claws scraping the planks.
All the other crew fell away, and soon Captain Bloodrose found herself trapped against the railing. She looked up at the monstrosity, and swapped hands with her sword. With a thunderous downward fist it crushed the captain’s left arm against the stout wood in a spray of blood and splinters. The captain staggered to one knee and dropped her weapon, panting weakly.
Jinny slid between them, slashing her blade into the giant fiend’s crotch. When the monster convulsed forward, she cut again, two-handed, and severed the terrifying head into the sea.
The pulverized bones of Pyrena’s hand were beyond healing, and she did not cry out or weep when they sawed it off at the forearm, nor when they applied the searing hot iron.
When the sweats abated, Jinny stood before her partner and took a deep breath. Her feelings became a maelstrom inside her. “Captain, I request to stay my nights in the bunks among the crew.”
“It’s ‘Captain’ now, is it? If that’s your wish.”
“I don’t want the crew seeing me different.”
“Is that all?”
“I… don’t want to become soft.”
“These are all choices. What do you really want?”
“You were showing off today. You could have died.”
“I saved my good arm. What is it you want?”
“I want my own ship. I want to sail you to the moon and hack it to pieces.”
“I’m very proud of you, Jinny.”
Jinny was on her way to speak with the captain about building a fast corvette when she saw her invite one of Leng women to her cabin, and heard the lock turn. Jinny stood on the deck of the ship for a long time, reminding herself of her choice, and barricading the tears. Then she relieved the wheelman at the helm. As the sun set behind the endless waves, Emalee glided in to perch on her shoulder.
When they acquired a second ship, Pyrena gave its command to Richard, despite his nocturnal proclivity.
Jinny spent more time with Richard, listening to his grunted poetry. She stayed up all night with the men and women of Leng, downing mugs of zoog rum and bellowing sea shanties of old Sarkomand with the natives of Parg. She read most of the ship’s library, from the expansive Pnakotic Manuscripts to the living fables of Vemoqi and the Crystal Leaves erotica. She spent hundreds of hours at the forecastle hearth with the old serpent man Ophidian Drake, until she could forge a blade folded with ebon ore from the Peaks of Thok. When finished, the honed steel coruscated darkly even in the high sun.
For a seven-year campaign, they raided, fought, and pillaged. It took that long to build a loyal company and fleet of a dozen vessels. They slew many. When they finally chanced upon the elusive plateau of Leng, none of the native crew wanted to depart.
Jinny’s skill with a blade was now unmatched. In all those years, she could not remember sleeping. When they finally launched the crusade for the sinister moon, she captained her own craft and an elite guard of cats.
“Onward now!” shouted Admiral Bloodrose from the bowspirit of the Arkham Rose. “We leave Kadath far astern!” She thrust forth the iron point of her hooked hand.
The thirteen red ships sailed through the basalt pillars and lifted from the ocean waters, past the horizon’s cliff, they rose into the cold breadth of space, their figureheads aimed at the moon.
They would lose many, but once the lunar beasts were conquered, they would be free to sail beyond, to anywhere, into new dreamlands.
Jinny adjusted the jib of the New Orleans, and made calculations. Her palms were damp on the wheel. She was alarmed to see the commander’s ship had broken formation and slid alongside hers. Just yards away, the admiral was looking only at her, puffing on her pipe. Jinny did not recall her smoking, but the aroma was very familiar.
A flash of sadness crossed Pyrena’s face, and she smiled tearfully. “So soon, my love…” she said, her face shrinking away.
She dwindled with every surrounding detail, losing vividness and color, out of view.
Jinny realized herself falling, away from the ship and the moon, ripping through dark and light, silence collapsing toward nothing.