A Distant Magic by Mary Jo Putney

magical ability to move the tumblers by pure thought, but she did have a knack for puzzles and locks, and this one took only moments to pick.
    Knife in hand, she dowsed the mage light and opened the door. The narrow corridor was dark and silent, though overhead cacophony ruled. There had been no more cannon volleys. Shouts and pistol shots suggested that one ship had tried to board the other, and the crews were fighting hand to hand. In the confusion, there might be an opportunity to escape.
    Invoking a don't-look spell, she ran down the corridor and climbed the ladder, emerging onto the deck warily. Dawn was a slash of orange along the eastern horizon, and there was just enough light to outline the men fighting with swords and sometimes pistols. She took shelter in the shadow of the wheelhouse and tried to make sense of the action. To her surprise, Gregorio's ship was a European trading vessel not dissimilar to the
Mercury.
She'd expected a pirate ship to look different.
    But the slim, narrow vessel lying alongside was unquestionably a corsair galley. Low and sleek, it had dozens of slaves chained to oars. Sections of the oars that extended beyond the ship were broken where the hulls banged together. So which ship was the attacker and which the victim? Had one pirate accidentally attacked another?
    The battle spilled across both ships, with the corsairs wearing light-colored turbans. They outnumbered the crew of the
Justice,
but Gregorio's men, a very mixed lot, fought very, very well. In fact, they were gradually prevailing, killing some of the corsairs and pushing the others back onto the galley. Gregorio was right in the middle of the action, moving with lithe ruthlessness as he struck down pirate after pirate.
    She had considered crossing to the other ship until she saw that it was a corsair. Joining them was unlikely to be an improvement. Perhaps she could escape from the
Justice
when its crew was looking the other way.
    She slipped around the wheelhouse and studied the starboard side of the ship, opposite the fighting. The
Justice
carried several dinghies, with the smallest secured a little forward of her position. She moved closer. After a quick survey, she decided she could cut the vessel loose with her knife. It was small enough that she could push it over the railing into the water. The sea was fairly calm, and if the boat stayed upright she could dive in next to it, then board and row away.
    But would such an escape improve her situation? When the
Justice
won its current battle, she'd be missed. Once they realized she wasn't aboard the ship, it probably wouldn't take them long to spot her, and rowing wasn't a fast way to travel. Even if she managed to escape, she might well be sentencing herself to death from thirst or starvation.
    She consulted her intuition. She didn't have the sense that she was likely to die escaping on a dinghy, so it was worth the risk. Of course, intuition might just be saying that she wouldn't manage to get away, but she was willing to try.
    She was sawing on a line that secured the bow of the dinghy when she heard Gregorio bellow with a fury that curdled the air. Curious, she moved back to the wheelhouse and saw that he and his men had advanced onto the galley.
    Gregorio was engaged in a shouting match with the corsair captain in a language she didn't recognize. The sky had lightened enough to reveal Gregorio's expression, and the blood on his curved sword. Most of the corsairs were wounded or captive. Very soon the fighting would be over.
    Sneering, the corsair captain—a
reis,
that's what they were called—jumped to the raised aisle that ran between the seats where the rowers were chained. He raised his sword to chop at the nearest slave. The slave screamed and cowered away, desperately trying to avoid the blow.
    With a roar, Gregorio leaped after the
reis
and smashed the other man's blade aside with his sword. Jean stared. It looked as if he was defending the slaves! Probably because