Read Online Crossed Blades by Kelly McCullough - Free Book Online
Authors: Kelly McCullough
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from the deeps. It hadn’t had the time or impetus to build the sort of waves that a big ocean blow brought with it.
Now we need to find a way aboard,
I mindspoke. Just for a little while really, until the storm blew itself out and we could return to Tien.
Looks like they lost the anchor, or cut it loose,
Triss replied.
So the easy way’s out.
Damn.
I couldn’t see that well through the murk, but had no reason to doubt him.
Maybe we can use the rudder somehow.
I turned and forced myself to swim slowly toward the back of the ship.
Namara had never sent me to the islands, so I didn’t know a lot about ships. I mean I knew the things everybody knows, like the pointy end goes in front, and right and left were called starboard and port. Beyond that my knowledge was spotty, a mix of the simple stuff you picked up hanging out in dockside bars, and the esoterica one gleaned from the odd courier job for smugglers.
It was a three-masted junk, and the thought of smugglers gave me another idea. On the big ocean-going junks like this one, there were often compartments, fore and aft, designed so they could be rapidly flooded to help the boat stay upright in strong winds and big waves. They called them ballast tanks or something like that, and the design was very different from the southern ships that came up out of the Magelands and the Sylvani Empire.
I’d been in and out of ships of both sorts while dealing with smugglers, and the tanks were great for that kind of work. If you put a secondary watertight compartment inside the big main one, and kept that main compartment flooded when you sailed into port, it made a perfect hidey-hole.
As I slipped around the back end of the ship, I was very happy to find a couple of flood ports at the waterline, along with a whole series of fist-sized ports slaved to the larger ones with magic. The main ports were just big enough for a man to slip through. They sat on each side of the rudder, just above a set of sailor’s wards. Of those, the only one I really recognized was the one to prevent fires, though I could guess at a couple of others since they were variations of the sorts of protections you’d see onshore for repelling vermin and the like.
Two questions remained: Was this a smuggling boat? And, did I have the strength to get both Jax and me aboard? On the first, I figured the odds were pretty good. Despite the storm, there wasn’t a light showing. Add that to the fact that it must have been lying at anchor out in the harbor instead of tied up at the docks, and the case was pretty damning. Either it was waiting for a fast cutter to come unload it, or it wanted to ride the tide out to sea before the sun rose. As for the latter question, there was only one way to find out.
Triss, hold us steady while I see if I can’t get the ports open.
I sank in the water while Triss shifted around, but then he got a grip on both me and the ship and lifted me partway free of the swells. A band of solidified shadow like a crescent moon now passed around my waist between me and Jax, then extended itself forward to sink its horns into the tarred seam between two planks. By bracing my boot tips against another seam lower down, I was able to position myself quite steadily in front of the nearer port.
The port looked like a giant’s closed eye. Starting at what would have been the outside corner of the eye, my magesight showed a line of silvery light running upward to the deck far above. Somewhere near the ship’s wheel it would connect to a tiny glyph. A simple thing, so that even the least of hedge witches would be able to close and open the port. The trick would come in activating the spell without also lighting up the glyph for anyone with the eyes to see.
I could cut the line, but then the glyph above would wink out and that would be almost as much of a problem. If I had time, tools, and energy—or really, any two of those—I could have managed it a dozen different ways. As it was, I had to
Now we need to find a way aboard,
I mindspoke. Just for a little while really, until the storm blew itself out and we could return to Tien.
Looks like they lost the anchor, or cut it loose,
Triss replied.
So the easy way’s out.
Damn.
I couldn’t see that well through the murk, but had no reason to doubt him.
Maybe we can use the rudder somehow.
I turned and forced myself to swim slowly toward the back of the ship.
Namara had never sent me to the islands, so I didn’t know a lot about ships. I mean I knew the things everybody knows, like the pointy end goes in front, and right and left were called starboard and port. Beyond that my knowledge was spotty, a mix of the simple stuff you picked up hanging out in dockside bars, and the esoterica one gleaned from the odd courier job for smugglers.
It was a three-masted junk, and the thought of smugglers gave me another idea. On the big ocean-going junks like this one, there were often compartments, fore and aft, designed so they could be rapidly flooded to help the boat stay upright in strong winds and big waves. They called them ballast tanks or something like that, and the design was very different from the southern ships that came up out of the Magelands and the Sylvani Empire.
I’d been in and out of ships of both sorts while dealing with smugglers, and the tanks were great for that kind of work. If you put a secondary watertight compartment inside the big main one, and kept that main compartment flooded when you sailed into port, it made a perfect hidey-hole.
As I slipped around the back end of the ship, I was very happy to find a couple of flood ports at the waterline, along with a whole series of fist-sized ports slaved to the larger ones with magic. The main ports were just big enough for a man to slip through. They sat on each side of the rudder, just above a set of sailor’s wards. Of those, the only one I really recognized was the one to prevent fires, though I could guess at a couple of others since they were variations of the sorts of protections you’d see onshore for repelling vermin and the like.
Two questions remained: Was this a smuggling boat? And, did I have the strength to get both Jax and me aboard? On the first, I figured the odds were pretty good. Despite the storm, there wasn’t a light showing. Add that to the fact that it must have been lying at anchor out in the harbor instead of tied up at the docks, and the case was pretty damning. Either it was waiting for a fast cutter to come unload it, or it wanted to ride the tide out to sea before the sun rose. As for the latter question, there was only one way to find out.
Triss, hold us steady while I see if I can’t get the ports open.
I sank in the water while Triss shifted around, but then he got a grip on both me and the ship and lifted me partway free of the swells. A band of solidified shadow like a crescent moon now passed around my waist between me and Jax, then extended itself forward to sink its horns into the tarred seam between two planks. By bracing my boot tips against another seam lower down, I was able to position myself quite steadily in front of the nearer port.
The port looked like a giant’s closed eye. Starting at what would have been the outside corner of the eye, my magesight showed a line of silvery light running upward to the deck far above. Somewhere near the ship’s wheel it would connect to a tiny glyph. A simple thing, so that even the least of hedge witches would be able to close and open the port. The trick would come in activating the spell without also lighting up the glyph for anyone with the eyes to see.
I could cut the line, but then the glyph above would wink out and that would be almost as much of a problem. If I had time, tools, and energy—or really, any two of those—I could have managed it a dozen different ways. As it was, I had to
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