Jerin looked out through the pilothouse windows. They were drifting downriver, stern first. The stern lantern marked the back of the boat. The water shimmered black, reflecting faint starlight. A thicker black marked the trees on the right and left banks. The boat rode roughly in the center of the river. Downriver, he could make out nothing but a faint frill of white cutting across the darkness ahead of him.
He stared at the line for a minute before he realized what he was looking at. It dawned on him that there was no horizon. No hills. No trees. As if the world suddenly ended a mile downstream—and he was rushing toward that edge. Like a sleepwalker, he opened the wheelhouse door and heard the deep endless roar.
The waterfall!
He glanced again to his left, downstream this time. Glimmering on the shore like evening stars, the lights of the lock and the town of Hera’s Step shone at once dangerously near and yet unreachably far.
“Oh, Holy Mothers,” he breathed as the thunder grew louder.
His mind raced from point to point on a straight line. There was no one in the engine room who could start the paddle wheel turning. The current was taking them downriver. The steering wheel was broken. The ship was going over the falls. He and Cira had to get off the ship.
He knelt and shook her. “Cira! Cira, get up! Get up!”
“What is it?” Cira asked groggily, getting to her knees.
“We’ve got to get off the ship. It’s Hera’s Step! We’re going over the falls!”
Cira stared out at the lifting spray, and then glanced to the shore. “We’ll never make it in time. The current will take us over before we swim ashore.”
“We have to try!”
“It will be safer to go over with the ship.” She caught hold of the whistle cord and pulled. “Find something to weigh this down!” she shouted over the howl. “We need to bleed off steam before we go over, or we might be scalded before we’re drowned!”
He tugged the coat off of Alissa, tied one sleeve to the dead woman’s wrist, and then stretched the other sleeve up to tie the whistle cord down. Cira gave him an odd look, then nodded. Then they hurried out of the pilothouse to the center of the two-hundred-foot boat, opposite the great side wheel. Cira shouted something, unheard over the endless howl of the steam whistle.
“What?” Jerin shouted.
Cira pulled him close and shouted directly at his ear. “It will go stern first, but then it will spin toward the side wheel! Hold tight to the rail, but let go toward the bottom! Don’t let yourself be trapped under the boat as it flips over! Do you understand?” When he nodded, she hugged him fiercely. “Jerin, I love you!”
And there was no time for anything more. The roar of the waterfall drowned out even the howl of the steam whistle. The spray enveloped them like a cold rain. The stern speared out over the vast empty darkness, and then, as Cira had predicted, the weight of the great paddle wheel slued the boat sideways. The deck canted as the whole ship tipped, and they hung from the railing as if from an overhead tree branch. For a moment, they dangled over the chasm, the foaming water at the foot of the falls hundreds of feet down, and then the ship dropped.
For almost a minute it seemed they fell, weightless, the river’s roar louder than their own screams. Then, with a brutal smash, they hit the cold darkness. Jerin tumbled over and over in the freezing black water with no sense of up, his lungs aching. Finally he broke surface. There were stars above, so he wasn’t under the Destiny. Huge forms glided around him, parts of the boat rushing with him downriver in disjointed confusion.
“Cira!” he shouted, flailing and striking wood. “Cira!”
In front of him, something had caught fire, and flames danced liquid down to the waterline. He realized the blaze was growing larger, that it was caught on the rocks or something, and that he was rushing toward it with all the mass of the Destiny behind him.
Dusk was falling as the Red Dog made its way the last few miles toward Hera’s Step. The banks rose until the gunboat steamed through the gorge cut by the waterfall into the escarpment over thousands of years. Slowly the river narrowed, and seemed to change to a place of menace, the granite cliffs throwing shadows over the boat, and huge boulders, lining the shores, blocked any landing. Amplified by the towering gorge walls, the low rumble from the distant waterfall sounded like the roar of a great beast.
Ren paced the top deck at the edge of the pilothouse shielding. “We’ll close with the first ship in the lock queue and use it to unload half the marines, then back off to safety.” She nervously covered the plans they’d laid, looking for a weakness. “The marines will cross to shore and take control of the locks. When they give the clear signal, we move into the locks.”
It would, however, be full night when they arrived at the locks. The marines faced a battle on unfamiliar ground in the dark. More of Kij’s damnable luck and careful planning, no doubt.
“Ship to starboard! Ship to starboard!” The shout was followed by a deep boom and the scream of grapeshot.
Ren ducked behind the wood shielding. The sharp metal tore open a marine beyond the shielding, her blood spraying the wood decking.
There were shouts of dismay. Ren risked a look over the wood shield. A gunboat steamed out of the shadowed creek mouth, a wall of woven tree branches screening it from casual glance. A gout of black smoke rose from the ambusher’s smokestacks, indicating Kij’d banked her fires to hide her trap, and now was frantically stoking up her boilers. Black, low, nearly featureless, the Porter gunboat glided like death toward them. It was an ironclad gunboat, its decks and hull covered with iron plates several inches thick. Ren had seen one only on paper, and now realized her own gullibility and naı ¨veté. Kij had talked her out of building the ironclads, said they were a waste of money in a time of peace. In all the speculation of what Kij had prepared as a trap, Ren had not once recalled the conversation, not even after the attempt to steal the heavy naval guns.
In the massive gunports, the barrels of the Prophets looked like oversized rifles. It would be a close battle—Ren without heavy armor, Kij without heavy guns.
“Hard to starboard! Bring the forward cannon to bear! Sink the bloody bitch!” Ren shouted.
The forward gunners ran out the bow cannon even as the ironclad spat another screaming round of grapeshot. Their distance was such that the grapeshot had time to spread over a wide pattern before striking. It peppered the decks, chewing away planking where the wood thinned. Screams of pain came from all quarters, mixing with the moans of those already wounded.
With a thunder that vibrated to Ren’s very core, the forward cannon fired. On a column of smoke and fire, the ball hurtled the gap and struck a glancing blow along the ironclad’s stern.
“We’ll have to hit them dead on to punch through their plating!” Raven shouted.
“Lieutenant!” Ren called to the marines’ commander, then paused as grapeshot roared from the other ship. Kij was firing her cannons in series, trying to keep Ren’s soldiers from sharp shooting the gunnery crews. “Have your women fire at will!” Ren shouted into the relative silence. “Aim for the gunports!”
It was a slaughter, her women trying to sharp shoot in the deadly hail, dying before they could get their shots off. The aft gun was useless. As the fore gun was run out to fire, the ironclad turned, forcing them to take another glancing shot. The ball careened off the thick plating. Beside Ren, the pilot fought the fast current to try and close with the ironclad while keeping clear of the boulder-strewn shores. They circled, wary as knife fighters, moving upriver as they cut each other with cannon fire.
“There’s the Portage River mouth!” the pilot shouted. “But I can’t get past her! She’s forcing us up the Bright River, toward the falls. It runs shallow from here on up! Either we’ll run aground or we’ll be forced under the falls!”
Ren swore. The ironclad’s steep side offered no purchase for her marines to board, and closing with Kij’s ship would only increase the damage that the grapeshot would do. They were ru
nning out of river, though, and soon would be at the foot of the falls itself.
“Do you hear something?” Raven shouted.
How can you hear anything over this hellish noise? Ren tried anyhow. Over the thunder of the cannons and the endless roar of the waterfall, there was a high-pitched sound, ceaseless, growing louder. A steam whistle, she recognized suddenly, blowing without stop, and coming closer.
“Where is that coming from?” Ren asked.
“Look!” A marine on the deck suddenly cried, pointing upriver toward the white curtain of water. “The falls!”
Half a mile upriver, and hundreds of feet up, the underbelly of a boat speared out over the edge of the falls. It came and came, unending, its steam whistle screaming a death keen that was now being caught and echoed back by the granite cliffs of the gorge. A hundred feet of hull showed before the side wheel appeared at the brink, and the whole mass pivoted on its weight. Sluing sideways, the boat started to fall, and the cannon fire picked out the lettering on its side wheel. Destiny.
Ren shouted in wordless protest. Jerin! Halley!
With a curse, the pilot swung the wheel hard, turning suddenly without regard to the ironclad. “If that hits us after it comes over the falls, it’ll take us under!”
The ironclad too was turning, trying to escape the massive ship now tumbling over the falls.
“No!” Ren caught the wheel and jerked it back. “Kij’s giving us her broadside! Ram the bitch! End it here! Kill her now!”
The pilot threw her a panicked look, and then shouted into the tubes, “Full speed ahead! Full speed!”
The Red Dog leaped forward, its bow arrowing through the dark waters. Ren ducked down low behind the shield, bracing for the impact. They struck with a great splintering crack, the braced bow of the Red Dog cleaving deep into the ironclad. Ren was slammed forward into the shielding, striking her head, eclipsing the world with a flash of dark and pain. Then the fore gun fired, more felt than heard, the muzzle apparently buried in the guts of the ironclad. The ball punctured one of the boiler engines of the ironclad, and the shriek of escaping steam and screaming women joined with the crack of rifles.
Raven had her by the arm then, and was hefting her up, crying, “It’s going to hit us!”
Ren turned, and saw the shattered decks of the Destiny rolling toward them, out of the night, tumbled by the fast shallow rapids. Her mind only understood flashes of what she saw: a railing here, an open doorway there, a hanging flight of stairs breaking off in mid-tumble.
Raven dragged her backward, back along the Red Dog’s top deck to the stern gun. There Raven pushed Ren down and caught her by the foot. “Strip! Get your boots off! We’re going to have to swim for it! The nearest Queens Justice is Annaboro. When you get to shore, stay low. Kij might have backup troops!”
They went into the dark, fast water then, Ren stripped to only a shirt while Raven was still fully dressed. Caught in the icy current, Ren struggled to keep afloat. She looked back. The water was littered with bodies, some thrashing, some still. The wreckage of the Destiny struck where the two ships were joined, and the river forced it up, rearing above the gunboats. Borne down by the weight of its plating and the water filling its bowels, the ironclad sank quickly. The Red Dog, still caught by its ram, rolled as the ironclad sank, the Destiny toppling over its dipping bow.
Oh, Jerin, love, I’m sorry. I’m sorry that I took you away from your mothers’ farm where you were safe. I’m sorry I let Kij take you as bait. I’m so very sorry that I’ve gotten you killed.
Ren came ashore downriver of the Portage River confluence, teeth chattering from the cold, bone weary and heartsick. Raven had vanished into the waters, and Ren could not remember if her captain even knew how to swim. Two guards kept faithfully to her. The sergeant, Buckley, apparently swam like a fish and had helped Ren keep her bearings as they struggled for shore. The other was a young private whose face Ren could not recall, and in the dark could not see, by the name of Cherry. For miles the fast current had carried them, and they could only keep their heads above water. Then the river turned, and in that bend, the water deepened and slowed and they thrashed ashore.
The wind had kicked up, tossing the trees and cutting cold as sharp as knives through their wet clothes. Buckley knew approximately where they were, and knew too of a nearby mansion laid to ruin in the last war. It would give cover and shelter well away from the exposed riverbank. Ren wanted only to lie in the mud and grieve, but dragged herself up anyhow. She couldn’t give up until she was sure Kij was as dead as her father, her elder sisters, Halley, and Jerin. She had to be sure Kij paid.
They were past the escarpment, and the land was flat here, smoothed by countless floods. They kept to the cave-black shadows of the windbreaks, hedging fields of freshly cut hay. The night was full of distant cracks of rifles, faint echoes of shouting, and the rolling thunder of racing horses. The gray of false dawn touched the sky as they reached the mansion sitting alone on a hill, the short summer night fleeing before the sun. In the silence before dawn, the dark, broken structure, surrounded by shorn fields, seemed ominous.
They paused in the windbreak at the foot of the hill, shivering, scanning the fields.
“How close is Annaboro?” Ren asked.
“Another ten miles south, Your Highness,” Buckley murmured, then cocked her head, listening intently. “Riders are coming.”
Ren swore. In their white shirts and red uniform pants, they stood out in the scanty cover of the windbreak. “Let’s try for the mansion.”
They ran. The sharp stems of the cut hay stabbed like a thousand needles in their bare feet as they raced for cover. The riders broke out of a woodlot behind them, and came sweeping toward them. A glance was enough to show the riders weren’t the Queens Justice. Even as Ren and the others reached the old front yard of the mansion, the riders cut them off, looping around them in a rough circle of lathered, blowing horses.
Kij looked worse for wear, at least. Her beautiful face was cut and bruised. Part of her shirt had been torn off, and a bloody bandage showed beneath. But she was alive, damn her soul, when everyone else was dead.
“Don’t you know when to die?” Ren asked her.
“I could say the same for you. I’ve been trying to kill you for six years,” Kij growled.
“So, how did you find me?” Ren asked, wondering how she had ever thought this woman to be her good friend.
“You washed up where all the dead bodies come to shore.” Kij gave a bitter laugh. “You just don’t have the decency to realize you’re dead.”
“Give it up, Kij. Killing me will only dig your grave deeper. My sisters know of your crimes. I’ve blocked all your plots in Mayfair. I’ve sunk your gunboat and your cannons. The Destiny is gone, and Jerin with her, damn you. Shooting me will get you nothing.”
“It will make me feel better.” Kij raised her pistol.
“Don’t even think about it!” a woman shouted from high above them.
Ren glanced over her shoulder, startled.
From the mansion’s second-story balcony, a shooter stood mostly hidden behind a support column, a sniper rifle aimed down at Kij. “Drop your guns!”
“Who the hell?” Kij shouted.
“I’m Eldest Whistler!” the woman shouted back. “Unlike you nobles, ‘sisters-in-law’ means something to us. We Whistlers have an unbreakable rule—you mess with one of us, you mess with us all!”
Like thorns growing from a rose, the long slender barrels of rifles emerged out of the broken windows of the mansion.
“Now, put down your guns!” Eldest shouted. “Or we’ll be finding out who gets the orphaned estate of Avonar!”
The moment froze in time, and then Kij made a show of dropping her pistol. “Put them down,” she commanded her sisters. “We’ll live to fight another day.”
Don’t count on that, Ren thought savagely, but held her tongue.
The other Porters threw down their weapons. A lone Whistler came out of the man
sion to collect the guns while her sisters covered her. Ren recognized the black hair, and the blue-eyed, steel-jawed look of the woman, but not her individually. The reason why became apparent as the other Whistlers stalked out of the mansion once the weapons were secured. Ren picked out Eldest, Summer, and Corelle easily, then Jerin’s other elder and middle sisters too, leaving a whole host of Whistlers she had never seen before. They were, she realized, Jerin’s cousins, the Annaboro Whistlers.
“Your Highness.” Eldest nodded to Ren as she flashed hand signals to her family. “It’s mighty hard to hold a wedding when you half drown most of the wedding party.”
“What?”
“We spent half the night plucking people out of the river. We would really like it if you took better care with our brother from here on in. He doesn’t swim all that well.”
“You’ve found Jerin! Alive?”
Eldest grinned. “Aye. We fished Princess Halley and Captain Tern out too.”
“They all are all right?”
Eldest sobered. “We sent Jerin home with my aunts. He’s chilled to the bone, addled, and took in lots of water. He should be fine, with bed rest. Captain Tern has a broken leg, else she’d be here. Your sister—we had to all but sit on her to keep her back where things are safer. A hard thing to do with a royal princess.”
Ren laughed. “And how did you find me?”
“Oh, we just followed Kij.”
The Whistlers secured the Porters and then escorted Ren back to the river to wait for a hastily commandeered steamer to pick them up. Halley arrived with a guard of four Whistler cousins. Despite the six months and the night of hardship, Halley looked younger than Ren remembered, bruised but grinning. She had stained her red hair black, but the night in the river had washed much of it out, leaving only her roots dark.
Ren hugged her hard, glad to finally see her alive and well. Releasing her younger sister, Ren swatted her on the shoulder. “Don’t ever do that again!”