Dawn had warned him that the teleportation wand was strong—stronger than it had any right to be, thanks to Banneker’s tinkering—and it would take him a moment to recover from the journey on deck. So he chose the forecastle to land on, hoping it would be empty enough for him to take a breather before setting off for the magazine.

What he didn’t realize was that he would be on his knees, trying to gasp as quietly as he could after feeling like he was stretched ten ways to Sunday in a void of nothingness on his journey across the waves.

“God, how does she do it?” he whispered to himself, gripping the planks and tar underneath him. After his desperate gulping for air turned into actual breathing, he looked up from his vulnerable position on deck and surveyed his obstacles.

The crew appeared to be in a normal rhythm, too far away from the pirate ships to run out the guns. The deck was neat and free of debris, as well—very little cargo or rope blocked his path from the forecastle to the hatch below.

But the largest threat aboard the ship was walking towards the forecastle at that moment.

“Raising a flag, are they?” Pearce drawled to his boatswain as they climbed the stairs. Ambrose scrambled away from the railing in time with his footsteps, to hide the sound of his own movement. “White, if they know what’s good for them.”

“You’d let them surrender, sir?”

“Of course not.” Pearce opened his spyglass with a snap, took one look, and sighed. “Red. How idiotic.”

Red flags on both ships, the sign for no quarter given. Their first warning for what was to come.

“They think they’re clever, being on the other side of the island,” Pearce continued, “but their speed is no match for ours. We’ll...” He squinted, then lowered the spyglass. “What is that?”

A splotch of scarlet, nearly as bright as the warning flags, zipped towards the bowsprit in a looping path. Ambrose grinned at the familiar sight, and grinned harder when Tom the parrot landed directly in front of Pearce.

“Bilge rat!” Tom squawked. “Bilge rat!”

Pearce sneered and reached for his pistol, but his boatswain caught his wrist. “Sir, there’s a letter.”

He reached towards Tom’s leg and untied the note there. As soon as the letter was freed, Tom took off. “Rapscallion! Scourge! Scoundrel!”

Pearce drew his pistol and fired. The shot veered wide, and Tom did another loop, its drunken squawking sounding like laughter.

“Sir.” The boatswain handed Pearce the unrolled letter. Ambrose didn’t need to see the paper to know what it said. Abandon Ship, in Dawn’s handwriting, complete with a black spot at the bottom.

A second warning of what was to come.

“They mean to fear-monger.” Pearce ripped the letter to pieces and tossed the scraps over the railing, letting them flutter over the figurehead. “A last resort of cowards. How their worthless captains have evaded capture for so long is beyond me. Full speed ahead, if you please.”

Ambrose watched the boatswain turn, and carefully followed him down. The final warning was on himself to deliver.

He descended to the main deck just as wisps of fog—unusual, even in such overcast weather—began to creep up the sides of the hull. Wooden devices planted by the Sunset hours ago were releasing tendrils of fog that built slowly, silently, until sailors were pointing over the sides of the ship and tugging on each other’s sleeves.

“Unnatural, it is,” one man breathed, watching the fog curl and twist over the choppy waves. “Told you this place was cursed.”

Ambrose smiled and shook his head. To a sailor, every place was cursed.

But that was precisely what this last warning hinged upon.

“Abandon ship,” Ambrose whispered into the man’s ear, and pulled away right as he jumped and looked over his shoulder. The sailor reached forward into the air. Ambrose leaned back, and the man grasped nothing.

“What?” his companion asked—but Ambrose had already slipped away, whispering near those who looked most terrified, until the main deck was a flurry of superstition.

“We should turn around,” one man was begging the boatswain. “I heard it, and he heard it, too. On opposite sides of the deck, we were!”

“I’ll not hear of such nonsense,” the boatswain snapped. “Now back to work.”

“Perhaps we should go inspect the island,” another brave sailor said. “Just to make sure—“

“I said back to work!”

But the sailors weren’t having it—too many had heard the voice, too many spooked by the fog. In the escalating commotion, Ambrose opened the hatch and descended. He only hoped that some of them would manage to commandeer the longboats before he placed the grenade.

#

Ambrose continued the whispers belowdecks, where amidst the darkness and the creaking of the ship, the warning had much greater effect. Not only did the sailors run upwards, they brought others with them, clearing his path to the magazine on the lowest level.

But he had a ghost of his own—steady footsteps following him down, not ascending with the others.

He paused against a bulwark and checked his pocket watch. The invisibility potion would hold for a while yet, but the ships were still speeding ahead, and he couldn’t afford to have those footsteps catch up with him. It was time to set the charge.

The lowest level of a ship, any ship, always set Ambrose’s teeth on edge. Though he couldn’t see that it was below the waterline, he could feel it, the water pressing in against the hull. Aboard the Navy ship, he had tried to tell himself that this area was safe—enemy cannons couldn’t reach him there.

But then he’d remember the depths surrounding him on three sides, and never felt more unsafe in his life.

The magazine, thankfully not guarded by a gunner, was defended only by two wet curtains hanging at the entrance. The gunner’s list slippers sat just outside, shoes to defend against static sparks—harmlessly annoying anywhere else, deadly in the magazine.

Ambrose kept a careful distance as he pulled out the brass grenade, clicked it into activation, then hid the device in one of the slippers. Tugging his sleeve back to keep the metal buttons on the safe side of the curtains, he reached in and tucked the grenade just inside the left corner of the room.

A small click echoed against the barrels within. Two minutes until detonation.

As Ambrose reached for the teleport wand at his belt, the steady, unrelenting footsteps hit the planks behind him.

“I smell a rat,” Pearce mused. Ambrose’s heartbeat thudded in his ears, and he looked down at his hands. Still invisible—but the creaking of the ship down here wouldn’t be loud enough to cover his own movements.

He stood slowly, cautiously, taking a step away from the magazine with each step Pearce took towards it. The commodore’s frown cut a sharp line in the light of the horn-shaded lanterns hanging all around them, and when he passed close, Ambrose could see every severe detail. He reached for his belt, but he had no weapon, had not even thought to bring a weapon. This was supposed to be a stealth venture, with no blood to be shed until the grenade went off.

Pearce continued his march towards the magazine, and Ambrose held his breath. No blood would be shed at all if the commodore found that grenade.

No Navy blood, at least.

So when Pearce reached for the curtains, Ambrose reached for one of the lanterns on the wall and shifted the metal latch with one sharp flick.

In the narrow passage, it sounded rather like the click of a pistol.

“The rat is bold,” Pearce said, pausing his movement. “Bold…” His hand reached through the curtain, but to the right, rather than the left, and withdrew with a measured bag of powder. “…and very stupid.”

Pearce whipped around and tossed the powder in Ambrose’s direction. It fell in a shower on his coat, sticking to every fold and crevice. Ambrose staggered back, but it was too late.

His shape was visible now, a shadow of a silhouette in dusty black.

Pearce smirked and reached for his pistol. Ambrose ran.

There was no rhyme or reason to his path except for the basics that tumbled through his head: avoid Pearce’s shots, lead him away from the magazine, and keep the grenade hidden—at least for another thirty seconds.

As he spun the teleport wand in his hand and felt it charge in his palm, he shoved anything he could into the path behind him—rope, crates, casks. Anything except for lanterns, thanks to the gunpowder coating his form. As he barreled up ladders and knocked aside cargo, sailors around him shrieked at the moving smudge of gray.

“Ghost!” one yelled. Pearce kicked aside a crate and raised his pistol. The shot buried itself in the ladder an inch above Ambrose’s hand, splinters striking his knuckles.

“Pirate!” Pearce shouted. “Shoot him!”

Shots riddled the air as he burst up onto the deck, never so glad in his life to see open water. The wand was nearly ready, its glow intermittent. If he leapt over the side and dove under the waves—

His foot caught on a coil of rope, and he slammed onto the wood, his wand clattering out of his hand. Panic surged in his chest as a shadow crossed over him.

“Back to the bilge with you,” Pearce spat. Somewhere above his head, a pistol clicked.

Ambrose’s panic exploded into anger. He was not going to die here, not on this ship, not on the water, not in front of that man—

He kicked his leg back and swept it in a furious arc. His boot slammed into Pearce’s leg, knocking it off the planks and sending the rest of the man’s body flailing sideways. As the commodore struck the deck with a thud, Ambrose grabbed the wand and wildly pointed forward.

As the wand flashed, a hand wrapped around his ankle.

#

The teleportation spell pulled and stretched him out of alignment, dragging harder and longer than it did on the journey out. As the void pressed in, Ambrose screwed his eyes shut and tried not to scream.

Then his eyes snapped open to nothing but white, and it took him a moment to realize it was all sand, blinding and biting, with bits of shell poking into his skin. Gasping for breath, he dug his palms into the ground, pushed himself up—and froze.

A weight still clung to his ankle.

He ripped his foot forward, out of the weak grasp, and staggered to his feet. Behind him, Pearce remained on his knees, sputtering and coughing up sand. The journey had knocked his wig askew, rumpled his coat, pushed his gun into the sand. His fingers weren’t reaching for it, not yet, but once the explosion struck, surely he would find the rage...

Ambrose froze. The explosion. The explosion—

He scrambled over the dune and ducked just in time.

The blast shook the island, bending the trees and rattling every grain of sand. Despite his hands over his ears, the concussive thunder shot through his skull until it jarred his teeth and filled his head with ringing. He crouched there in the dune, clenching his jaw against the dizzying pain, until the stench of powder and smoke forced him to look up.

The flagship was nothing but a billowing fireball, with a scattering of now-overturned longboats all around. Flaming debris shot from the plumes of smoke, raining down upon the flanking ships and the surrounding waves. It wouldn’t be long until the rain of ash and charcoal started to land on the island itself—Ambrose would have to run soon.

Then Pearce staggered to his feet, a disheveled silhouette against the burning of his own flagship. His shoulders tensed in rage, then hardened into cruelty, as quickly as hot steel thrust into water. His fingers tightened around the pistol dangling at his side.

Ambrose let his boots sink into the sand. He had no weapon, no potion. There was no point in running.

At least he wasn’t going to die on the water.

“We told you to surrender,” he said, his body fading back into view as Pearce turned. “We tried to warn you.”

Pearce’s eyes flashed in recognition of his former sailor, and hate dripped from his mouth as he spoke. “You?” he hissed. “The potioneer?”

Ambrose lifted his chin. “The pirate.”

As Pearce raised the pistol, Ambrose closed his eyes and thought of a red coat.

The shot rang out, sharp and heavy along the beach—but he felt no pain. No red stain spreading across his chest, no cold, no slipping away.

He opened his eyes to find Pearce lying on the sand, soaking the dune with his blood.

“See?” a breathless voice rasped out. “Told you I’d shoot him.”

Moments later, he was engulfed in a red coat and shaking arms.

Through the shot ringing in his ears, all of it felt distant. The black hair brushing against his cheek, the hands on his back, the wild heartbeat against his.

Then he caught a glimpse of a rowboat beached stubbornly near the makeshift flagpole, and everything rushed into him at once. “Eli?”

“I couldn’t do it.” Eli’s voice vibrated against his neck, filling him with warmth. “I couldn’t go back to the ship and leave you here. If I had—oh, God, if I had—“

Ambrose sank into his arms, gathering fistfuls of Eli’s coat to pull him closer. “I’m here,” he said, as if to make himself believe it. “I’m here, I’m alright.”

Eli slowly drew back, keeping a hand on his cheek. “You are here,” he repeated, then looked to the flagpole with a smile. “Go raise the flag and tell the crew.”

Ambrose staggered to the flag and tugged on the rope, his fingers leaving black smudges on the twisted hemp. Once the simple scrap of blue, was at the top, he fell back and looked to the ships to see what they raised back.

Flares crackled from the Claw immediately, a frantic and relieved red and black against the gray clouds. Then pink, from the Sunset. Then every flare wand both ships had, orange and blue and green and purple.

Together, the two men shoved the rowboat out to the water, the waves dyed rainbow with reflections of fireworks.