On Discord Isle by Jonathon Burgess

topsail rigging. Something slammed into the deck near her head and she scrambled to her feet. It was the other Bluecoat.
    Reaver Jane flicked the blood from her cutlass and raised an eye at Lina. “You keep trying these things, you’re going to get hurt.”
    “I didn’t have much choice!” she replied. Lina glanced down at the marine she’d hit. The man wasn’t moving. “Anyway, we’ve got bigger problems to worry about. Look!”
    She pointed out the colonel and his men up on the sterncastle deck. The colonel himself still called out imperiously, ordering his men like pieces on a chessboard. The Bluecoat with the swivel gun was almost finished loading it, running a rammer down the barrel and priming the guncock mechanism at the same time.
    Reaver Jane understood immediately. She snatched a pistol from her belt, took aim, and fired.
    The ball went wide. It sparked off the barrel of the swivel gun and ricocheted back into the face of the Bluecoat priming it. The man fell back without even a cry and dropped lifelessly to the deck.
    Lina raised an eyebrow. “Good shot.”
    “I was aiming for that colonel,” said Jane. “Here, I’ll clear us a path. You go overboard and scurry up channels on the side. Take that gun. I’ll go the direct route. Bluecoaties can’t think a single thought on their own. If we can take care of that powder-covered popinjay up there, we can end this.”
    Lina opened her mouth to object, but the piratess was already away. She charged with a wild cry at the port-side sterncastle stair, lashing out at any marines she could along the way. They reacted, opening a small hole in the fighting between Lina and the starboard side of the ship.
    Lina swallowed and darted for the railing. She slipped on blood and bodies and collided with the rail. Ducking a wild slash, she rolled over it and threw a prayer to the Goddess that she didn’t fly off into the ocean.
    Her feet caught on the channel boards anchoring the rigging from the deck up to the mast. They were barely wide enough to stand on, a ledge stretching back sternward that jutted out over the churning ocean just a dozen feet below. She crept along it with both hands gripping the ship’s railing from the wrong side.
    A pistol ball hit the railing above her head. Lina ducked as splinters rained down onto her shoulders. She moved a few more feet and froze as two struggling men slammed into the rail. Both of their swords went flying, missing the top of her head by inches and clattering across the channel board before dropping into the sea. They cursed and lashed at each other, a Bluecoat marine and one of her own crewmates, Jonas Wiley. The Bluecoat threw a punch that folded Wiley over, then drew a dagger from his belt. But a fume enveloped him as he went for the killing blow, like heat-haze on a hot summer’s day. He fell to the deck, screaming.
    Lina blanched and glanced back up at the Dawnhawk . Just as she’d suspected, Maxim and Konrad both were hanging over the gunwales, casting aetherite spells where they could to assist. Lina didn’t know, and didn’t want to know, the specifics of their power, though Maxim had told her that each Working was bartered at dear cost from their daemon familiars. Their efforts might help buy time, though it wouldn’t change the outcome in the end. Lina still had to reach the sterncastle.
    Somehow she made it. The sterncastle deck appeared on her right just as the channel came to an end and a long window into the captain’s cabin appeared. Another gunshot rang out nearby and she heard Jane’s wild battle cry, followed by the clatter of swordplay.
    The sterncastle railing was only a few feet above her. As well, the swivel gun. Lina took a breath and placed the tip of her boots on the bare lip of the window frame. She grabbed the base of the railing and strained to lift herself. Slowly she rose up, once again able to see and hear the battle. Lina expected a stray bullet or blow from a sword to take her head