“I warned you.” Sebastian pulled the trigger.
The back of Gareth’s head burst with a small explosion of blood and brain and bits of skull. He fell into Selena, knocking her into the men in front of her. But the loss of their commander didn’t break their discipline as Sebastian had hoped. Other Bazira gripped Selena by the arms and hauled her toward the door, Accora’s ice daggers following them after, until one large pirate clubbed the old woman on the back of the neck. As she crumpled to the ground in a flutter of gray robes, the big man tossed her over his shoulder and followed the rest out of the keep.
Sebastian tore down the stairs. Why are they running? Why aren’t they staying to fight? The window nearest him shattered and a glass bottle stuffed with a flaming rag rolled next to feet, and then he knew why. He had time enough to get his arm up to shield his face and then the world turned red and hot and sharp.
Niven watched the grubby men drag Selena out of the keep. He had never wished so mightily for a weapon, and then realized the floor was littered with dead Bazira; Accora’s frantic bursts had been more deadly than any expected of the old woman.
Niven scrambled to Gareth. Blood leaked from under the ruins of his skull. Niven swallowed hard and unsheathed the dead man’s sword just as the window nearest the front door exploded. A bottle stuffed with a burning rag crashed through it and rolled across the wooden floor toward Captain Tergus who had appeared out of nowhere, a smoking flintlock in his hand.
The smell of oil was pungent. The blast was a clink of breaking glass and then a roar. Niven saw Julian sweep his long black coat over his head, and then Niven had to recoil. He shielded his eyes as a thousand droplets of flaming oil splattered him. When he looked again, Julian was on fire.
Niven scrambled to his feet, and tore off his blue and silver overtunic. He smothered Julian’s shoulder but the skin peeled off his neck in blackened curls. Nivine reached for his ampulla but there wasn’t time. Julian staggered to his feet, snarling curses and pushing Niven away.
Niven gripped Julian’s shoulder, squeezed his eyes shut, and uttered the sacred word. The orange glow came, smothering the burnt flesh and leaving much of it whole. Niven stared at his own hands and then Julian shoved him and raced to the back of the keep.
“Through the kitchens!” the captain shouted, and then ran the opposite direction, toward the front door that was all but obscured by smoke and fire.
Behind Niven, a native woman screamed. A second bottle smashed another of the windows that lined one wall of the feasting hall. Another followed, and then another. The bottles rolled this way and that, and Yuk’ri and crewmen scrambled away from them as if they were slithering snakes. A table burned from the first explosion; fire licking upward and spreading outward, fed by the hay strewn over the floor. Flames raced over it in every direction.
“Get back!” someone cried—a man’s voice, though Niven didn’t recognize it.
Niven, still stunned by what he had done, thought to follow Julian through the front, but Cat was dragging him the other way, toward the kitchens in the back—a path that wasn’t yet burning.
The second explosion lit up the room, heating the air with roaring flames and spitting burning oil and shards of glass. A third bottle ignited shortly after, and Niven and Cat were thrown against the wall. Niven bit back a scream as hot oil spattered his face and the back of his neck. Cat shrieked.
The room roiled with biting smoke and then the final bottle exploded on the other side of the room near the stairs that led to the upper floors. The walls’ musty tapestries were afire, as were several of the dead bodies. Niven’s eyes watered at the stench of burning flesh and he ran blindly, crashing into Cat, stumbling through the kitchen, and then he was outside, sucking in clean air. Many Yuk’ri and the rest of the crew were scattered all over the grass of the inner bailey, well away from the burning keep.
“Niven!”
Grunt lay with Whistle’s head in his lap. The boy cradled his arm that was burnt bare of clothing, his face a grimace of agony. His flesh bubbled; sickening white blisters boiling up even as Niven watched. “His back too,” Grunt cried. “I can feel the heat.”
Niven’s own face and neck were spotted with burning oil droplets, but he ignored the pain that must be nothing compared to Whistle’s arm. Niven started to reach for the moon and his ampulla, but instead heaved a deep breath and laid his hands on the boy. He muttered the word and the healing glow dutifully came, emanating from under his palm and spreading over the wounds. The flesh knitted itself in some places but remained red and raw up to his elbow. Too much oil on his skin. Niven thought of Selena’s lesson with Jorqui. He asked for healing, and then held on to the answering glow.
The pain in his own face and neck vanished and Niven felt infused with power. With his newfound energy, Niven called for more healing magic and then sent it to Whistle. His flesh’s angry red shade lightened to pink, and then to his natural color. He stared at his own healed flesh while Cur, behind him, sank to his knees in relief. Grunt stroked the boy’s hair and murmured soothing words.
Niven looked around at those gathered on the grass, and hurried to a Yuk’ri man’s whose hands were raw and red. Niven healed him while the keep burned like a stone oven, full of flame.
“Ilior! Where’s Ilior?” he cried just as a huge single-winged shape loped down the small hill, into the jungle where the pirates and Bazira had gone. Cat tore down the hill after, a cutlass in one hand and a small knife in the other. She was missing one glove and her bare hand was as orange as her hair.
Was she burned? Is that oil? He sat back on his heels, exhausted from healing and his nerves jangling from the attack that had been so sudden and so violent.
Now that Whistle was safe, the crew of the Black Storm had gathered their weapons to follow. Grunt pushed a sword into Niven’s hand and Niven took it. It was a Bazira’s curved blade.
“And you,” Niven said. “You can speak.” The old sea dog didn’t reply but turned and loped down the hill and Ori was suddenly at Niven’s side, her white shift smudged with soot. “He can speak,” he told her, bewildered.
“Strange night. Strange tidings.” The black pits of her eyes danced with the flames of the burning keep. “And what about you, Aluren? Are you ready to fight?”
Niven glanced down at his hand that had healed without moon or seawater, and that now gripped a sword. “Yes.” He swallowed hard. “Yes,” he said again, louder. “Paladin Koren needs me.”
He hefted his borrowed sword and ran down the hill, toward the wilds of Saliz’s jungle.