On Discord Isle (33 page)

Michael Hockton leapt across the alley and rammed the servants’ door with his shoulder. He bounced away with a curse, then looked back at Lina. “Come on!” he cried.

 She joined him, running full tilt at the closed doorway. Lina bent her shoulder and gritted her teeth; still, the impact jarred her, bouncing her back into the alleyway, slightly dazed.

A cry came from the mouth of the alley, followed by a gunshot that puffed up a small cloud of brick dust from the wall of the Apothecarium. The ball ricocheted back and forth, raining grit on the pirates. Lina clambered to her feet. Distantly, she realized that Runt still hissed and spat, casting lurid red light from his belly at the door before them. Michael Hockton tried to ram open the door again, and failed. Lina joined him as Perinese shouts echoed closer, both from the mouth of the alley and the interior of the counting house.

Then a boot appeared between them both, attached to the tree-trunk leg of Sarah Lome. The gunnery mistress kicked the servants’ door open with one blow, sending it all but flying inward. Hockton went first, and Lina followed him through the now-open portal.

The room beyond was cozy and clean. It stank of medicinal herbs that hung drying from the rafters and fumes that rose from boiling alembics along the back wall. A curtained doorway on the left led to the front of the building, while a wide ladder ascended past the rafters to a room above. Mr. Gravelin, the undead apothecary, worked at the table with its alchemical devices. Off to the right, in a cozy chair beside a burning fireplace, sat Omari with a book in one hand.

The dark-skinned woman stared at them in surprised outrage. “Who are you people?” She cried. “What are you doing here?” She put the book down and stood. “How dare you just barge in and—”

Sarah Lome stalked over to confront the woman. “Which way to the roof?”

Omari folded her arms. “What? I’m not telling you a thing. Now, get out!”

The gunnery mistress gestured, and three of the pirates moved forward. Tricia and a heavily bleeding Jonas Wiley restrained Omari, who fought and cursed at them. Elly Minel grabbed Gravelin, yanking him from the table where he sat.

“Um,” said Lina. “I don’t think that’s a good—”

A cry from behind interrupted her. Lina turned to see that most of the pirates had moved inside the back room of the Apothecarium now. Lucian, Reaver Jane, and three others covered the rear, trying to shut the door. Bluecoats appeared in the alley, charging for the opening with sabers and muskets raised.

They clashed in the doorway. Lucian parried a hacking blow, only to find the barrel of a pistol in his face. He ducked, and grizzled Jeremiah Frey took the ball meant for him in the neck. Reaver Jane snarled and fell on the shooter with her cutlass, cleaving through the Bluecoat’s collarbone down into his chest. The man died screaming, and Jane fell with him, trying to recover her sword. Someone leapt over her—Lanters, the Bluecoat sergeant who’d led the charge back in the counting house. He bowled into Charlie Green, knocking the man back with his fist, then gave a thrust with his saber that spit the pirate like a kebab. Sarah Lome appeared above the two, and picked up the sergeant with one hand. She proceeded to batter the fellow with her fists like he was a side of beef, and his cries of pain joined the cacophony of the struggle.

“Oh no,” said Omari. “No! You can’t fight here! Not while I’m in here!”

She jerked against the pirates who restrained her. Gravelin fought his captor as well, groaning and growling in such an inhuman tone that Elly Minel let him go. The Revenant tottered right back to his alembics and sat down to putter with a mortar and pestle, completely ignoring the chaos at his back.

Omari spied Lina in the crowd. “You! You’re the harlot from earlier. You’ve got to get these people out of here!”

Lina resented the accusation. She opened her mouth to reply, when Michael Hockton finally freed himself from the bindings around his wrists. He threw them away with a yell of relief, and then looked about for a weapon. At that point a mouse fell from above, landed on his shoulder, and fell into the breast pocket of his coat. Perturbed, he fished it out, revealing a tiny disemboweled mouse-corpse. It still moved, even without its guts and belly; the legs, tail and head twitched back and forth.

The Bluecoat deserter stared at the thing in horror, when an orange ball of fur and teeth fell from the rafters and landed squarely on Hockton’s face. He screamed, and it yowled, and the both of them fell off to the side.

As the Bluecoats pressed inside, Lina’s crewmates let go of Omari and drew their blades. One stared at the undead mouse where it crawled on the floor. The other threw himself into the fray. Lina tore her gaze from the scene to look at Omari. “Why?” she asked, throwing up her hands. “What are you
doing
here? Why are there so many dead things in here?”

Omari looked pained. Behind them, Sarah Lome yelled and a man let out a scream.

“It’s not my fault! Except that it somewhat is.” Omari shook her head. “Look, you can’t fight here, you’ll ruin everything I’ve built! The dead come back when I am around. I don’t know why, but they just...come back. You’ve got to stop fighting!”

Oh no
. Lina looked back at the struggle in the doorway. The fighting had calmed, for the moment, with both sides withdrawing to rally and rearm. All three members of the committee held the interior of the portal, supported by her wounded crewmates. Outside stood Admiral Wintermourn with the now-battered sergeant, and three ranks of Royal Marines. In the doorway between them rose a waist-high pile of the dying and the dead. The door itself had been half-carved off its hinges, and would never close again.

“Well done, you rogues,” said Wintermourn, voice light and airy. “You’ve had a good run. Short, but good. I commend you on your ferocity. However inept it is proving, in the end.”

Lucian waved his saber at the man. The tip of it dipped slightly, and he supported the arm that held it with his other hand. Blood streamed down his face from half a dozen wounds. “Just come on in here and take us,” he said. “You can join your fellows in growing cold upon the stoop.”

“That we will,” replied Wintermourn. “The alarm is out. I’ll have another eighty men here within moments.” The admiral paused to tap his chin. “However, it occurs to me that I should at least make the attempt to accept your surrender. You’ll still hang, of course. But one must observe tradition.” He folded his hands behind his back as the sergeant barked out a command. The two back rows of soldiers removed the bayonets from their muskets and began to reload.

“It’s like talkin’ to that bloody mad captain of yours,” hissed Reaver Jane.

Lucian shared a look with Sarah Lome. “Well,” he replied. “More like what Fengel always wanted to be.” He threw a glance at Lina, looking pointedly up the ladder toward the roof, before turning his attention back to the alley outside. “You can take your tradition and jam it up your backside,” he crowed. “We’re the men and women of the
Dawnhawk
, and surrender isn’t any kind of thing we know.”

Lina rolled her eyes, even as she moved for the ladder.

“Good,” said the Admiral. “I do so hate dealing with prisoners, even in the interim on their way to the gallows. Sergeant? If you please.”

The sergeant nodded. He bellowed another order and the Bluecoats took aim.

Then the corpses began to move. They lurched and groaned and shifted where they lay in the doorway, every last one of them suddenly crawling and trying to stand upright. The noises they made caused the hairs on the back of Lina’s neck to stand up straight.

One of the Bluecoats panicked. His musket erupted with the sound of a thunderclap. The rest opened fire, and lead balls ripped through the mass of Revenants. Undead flesh stopped most of the shots, but a few flew past. Lina watched in horror as one took Elly Minel in the chest.

Elly tottered backward with a cry of pain. She landed against Gravelin’s table, knocking a whole array of bubbling glassware onto the floor. It shattered with a sound like a bomb, and Gravelin himself rose up, groaning angrily. The Revenant fell on the dying Jeremiah Frey, who gurgled and fought weakly back. In the doorway, several of the undead pirates tottered for the Bluecoats outside, while the undead soldiers in the same pile came for the crewmen of the
Dawnhawk
.

The room descended into screaming anarchy. Runt launched himself from Lina’s shoulder and circled the room up near the rafters, spitting and hissing in distress. Someone knocked over a flask of some oil, which fell before the hearth, igniting instantly and spreading flames as it went.

Lina shook herself and grabbed Omari by the shoulders. “The roof!” she cried. “The roof, damn it to the Realms Below! We just need to get to your roof!”

Omari focused on her. She nodded twice and gestured at the ladder. “There’s a hatchway and another ladder in my room above!” A pistol went off by her head and she cursed. Lina glanced over to see Reaver Jane gun down an already-dead Bluecoat. Horribly, the corpse had merely been knocked down momentarily, even with a hole in its throat the size of a peach pit.

Lina screamed to the room at large. “The ladder! Up the ladder to the rooftop!” Then she followed her own advice, pulling Omari up behind.
To the Realms Below with this nightmare.
It was well past time to leave.

She ascended quickly through to another room. A soft-looking bed was set in one corner, piled high with pillows. Beside it stood a lady’s vanity. The wall opposite looked out onto the street before the shop. Next to the window was another ladder leading up to a small closed hatch set against the slanted interior of the roof.

No sooner was she up than the others appeared as well. A panicked Reaver Jane and Lucian Thorne climbed up, only some of the blood covering them their own. Ryan Gae climbed up, grey-faced and clutching his chest, half-supported by Sarah Lome. More of her friends and crewmates ascended in an attempt to escape the chaos below.

They didn’t even need prompting. Everyone rushed for the other ladder, Reaver Jane winning out and nimbly making her way up to and through the hatch onto the roof. Allen the Mechanist came next, wild-eyed and clutching a bloodied knife like it was a lifeline. Then the others followed, fighting to escape. Lina held Omari back from the press by reflex. There wasn’t any way either of them were getting through right now.

Others climbed up from below now. Lina saw a pair of hands that belonged to Elly Minel. Jeremiah Frey’s face appeared, half stove-in and his throat slit. Flickering reflections gave a hellish cast to the visage. The Revenants were climbing after them.

It was Omari who acted first. She pushed past Lina, ran to the vanity, and retrieved a chair. Thrusting it down the opening, she knocked free the first undead corpse, which fell back down into the burning room below. Lina joined her with a broom she’d found in the corner, gorge rising in her throat.

They defended the top of the ladder until the rest of the still-living crew had climbed onto the rooftop. Then Lina threw her broom down and went to make her own escape. Omari joined her, angry tears running down her cheeks.

Lina ascended through the hatch into cool night air. The roof of the Apothecarium was flat, with a decorative crenellation that ran around the edge. Lantern lights illuminated the street, along with soldiers whistling and shouting commands. Above, the
Dawnhawk
floated, its edges lit by the light of the moon. Ropes and rope ladders dangled from every side, and the surviving crew were already making their escape back aboard the airship.

She made to urge Omari onward, and spied four blue-coated figures rising up into the room below. Lina recognized the sergeant and Admiral Wintermourn among them. The Admiral shouted at the others, who frantically tried to fight off the Revenants climbing up after them. Just as Omari cleared the hatch onto the roof, he glanced up, looking directly at Lina.

“Up there!” he cried, his arrogant features twisted into an ugly snarl. “Get me their heads if you want to keep yours! Neither flames nor these abominations are going to stop me from bringing righteous—”

A fat orange tabby cat flew out from the hatch to land on the admiral’s face. It hissed and spat and fought, and Wintermourn let out a yell as it clawed at him. The sergeant turned back just as Michael Hockton rose up from the ladder from the room below, swinging Runt about him like a flail. The scryn snarled angrily, flapping its manta-ray wings and spitting furiously. Caustic, poisonous spittle caught one soldier full in the face, and then Runt smacked into the sergeant, sending them both crumpling to the floor.

Hockton clambered past, running straight for the other ladder and the rooftop hatch. He grabbed up Runt and threw the dazed scryn around his neck like scarf. As he passed the admiral he snatched Cubbins the tabby cat by the scruff of its neck. Then, one-handed, he clambered up to the rooftop hatch, quicker than Lina would have thought possible.

“Must be going,” said Hockton. The renegade Bluecoat’s face was covered in scryn-bite welts and cat-claw scratches. “I really hope you’ve got a good escape planned up here, because—”

He fell silent as he looked past Lina’s shoulder to the
Dawnhawk
above. Out of the corner of her eye, Lina spied Omari already climbing the ladder.

“Yeah,” she said, butterflies in her stomach. “The raid was a damned shambles, but we’ve a pretty good escape plan.” She glanced at Runt, worried. The scryn hung limply, chirping to himself, as if addled. “What did you do to my pet?”

Michael Hockton blinked. “What? Him? Nothing. We’ve a rapport, like you said.”

The hatchway frame exploded between them, sending splinters and grit flying up. Admiral Wintermourn was at the foot of the ladder, cursing and calling for a fresh pistol from his sergeant.

“Time to go,” said Lina.

Hockton leapt nimbly out onto the roof, then kicked the hatch shut. He adjusted his grip on the snarling, squirming Cubbins, then drew a dagger with his free hand. This he jammed through the outside handle of the latch, preventing it from opening.