Descent to the Powder Racks

Could three falling duelists survive forty vertical feet of open air before mutineer gunners loaded canister into their battery? Rostislav Benov gripped the iron release lever on the mezzanine winch drum, watching the salt foam churn against the lowest pontoons of the Morovian Pleasure-Rotunda. He needed fifty yards of festival silk to hold their weight long enough to reach the gun deck before that ninety-second reload seam snapped shut.

"Jump on the third chime!" Rostislav shouted over the creak of the sagging cupola rafters.

He yanked the iron dog from the ratchet teeth.

The three heavy bolts of crimson silk unrolled in a deafening hiss, their gold-fringed edges snapping outward into the harbor gale like falling ribbons. Rostislav launched himself over the cedar balustrade without waiting for Boleslav's reply.

The wind hit him like a fist, reeking of burned tallow and low tide. Rostislav seized the leftmost banner, wrapping the slick crimson fabric once around his left forearm while his polished boots skimmed the outer curve of the fluttering weave. Beneath him, thirty feet of void dropped toward the dark cedar planks of the pontoon deck.

To his right, Boleslav plummeted along the central banner, violet velvet coat flaring like the wings of an irritated pheasant. Danika dropped along the third strip with silent, terrifying speed, her dark boots clamped to the silk hem, both flintlocks already drawn and leveled between her knees.

"Mind the velvet, Benov!" Boleslav bellowed across the rushing air, his curved sabre gripped tight in his right hand. "One fleck of harbor soot and I demand compensation from your family troupe!"

"Keep your chin tucked, master swordsman," Rostislav called back, grinning into the spray. "The privateers below are about to supply plenty of soot for free!"

Ten feet beneath their plunging boots, the smoke on the battery deck split apart.

"Upper rigging!" a harsh voice barked from the darkness below. "Swivel gun, heave ho! Scatter the bastards into the drink!"

An iron swivel mounted on the southern timber rail roared, vomiting a cone of burning wadding and lead grape straight into their path.

Rostislav saw the flash reflected across his rapier blade. He kicked hard against a protruding cedar gallery stanchion, driving his body into a flat horizontal spin. Internal qi surged through his wrists in tight, outward spirals. His needle-pointed steel hummed like a plucked lute string, drawing an unbroken circle of silver light around his torso.

Four heavy lead pellets struck the spinning arc of his rapier. Each impact rang with a dull, resonant clink as Rostislav’s angular torque threw the shot aside, spitting sparks into the empty harbor night.

The recoil pulled hard on his shoulder, but he did not arrest the spin. Instead, he kicked his heels together, inverted his descent, and slid down the final ten feet of silk head-first.

Two paces above the rocking pontoon timbers, Rostislav released the fabric.

He flipped cleanly through the acrid powder fog, landing on the balls of his boots between two heavy eighteen-pounder auxiliary carronades. The pontoon pitched beneath him as an ocean swell rolled past, but Rostislav lowered his center of gravity, absorbing the heave through loose knees.

A burly privateer gunner with a stained canvas apron lunged at him, swinging an iron rammer like a quarterstaff.

Rostislav swayed inside the blow, letting the heavy wooden shaft brush his silk sleeve. He drove the pommel of his court rapier into the gunner’s solar plexus, pivoted on his left heel, and swept the man’s ankles out from under him. The gunner slammed against the gun carriage with a breathless grunt.

Before the downed loader could crawl clear, Rostislav snatched a six-inch iron marlinspike from the tool rack beside the carriage. With a sharp downward thrust of his left palm, backed by a concise pulse of focused qi, he drove the tapered spike straight into the carronade’s touchhole. The iron sheared into the brass vent-lining with an ear-splitting shriek, sealing the ignition channel for good.

"That settles the southern eighteen-pounder," Rostislav murmured.

A second privateer lunged from behind the neighboring gun, brandishing a boarding axe. Rostislav did not draw back. He hooked his boot under the gun’s train tackle, hauling the heavy hemp line taut. The axe blade bit deep into the oak deck planks, missing his calf by three inches.

Rostislav sprang over the stuck haft, driving his knee into the man's throat. As the second gunner tumbled backward toward the scuppers, Rostislav snatched the second marlinspike from his belt. He jammed the spike flush into the second carronade’s vent, driving it home with the flat of the heavy iron tackle block.

Metal groaned and seated tight. Two auxiliary guns were cold iron now, their lines severed and vents plugged beyond any quick field repair.

To his flank, two loud cracks signaled Danika’s arrival. The Flint-Shadow assassin rolled across the wet pontoon planks, coming up in a low squat as two corsair musketeers dropped into the scuppers, each drilled clean through the breastplate.

A second later, Boleslav landed with an extravagant flourish that sent sea foam spraying ten feet into the air. His silver sabre whipped in a wide, circular sweep, gathering the sloshing bilge water into a flat liquid blade that swept three approaching cutlass-men off the pontoon edge and straight into the churning gulf.

"Incline your head, acrobat," Boleslav said, flicking sea water from his lace cuffs. "You nearly made me smudge my scabbard on that rail."

"You are welcome for the clearance, my lord," Rostislav said, retrieving his court rapier and checking the blade's true.

The laughter died in his throat as a heavy iron hatch on the raised command pontoon swung open.

Thick gray smoke rolled across the central catwalk. From the gloom emerged Captain Stanislav Voryn, his salt-encrusted naval coat buttoned to the neck over heavy brigandine. In his scarred left hand, Voryn held a long brass linstock, its slow match glowing cherry-red in the ocean mist.

His right hand rested on the iron breech of the central thirty-two-pounder siege carronade.

The massive short-barreled cannon was already slewed inboard on its traversing carriage, its yawning muzzle packed to the rim with canister shot and pointed dead at the trio from less than twelve paces. At that range, a single discharge would turn three cultivators, six pontoons, and the entire lower support framework of the pagoda into floating kindling.

Four hardened corsairs flanked their captain, cross-belts bristling with cocked doglock pistols, but none of them raised a weapon. They stood rigid, waiting for the burning cord in Voryn's grip to drop.

"You took my auxiliary pieces," Voryn said, his gravelly voice cutting through the hiss of the harbor tide. "Neat footwork. Very pretty."

The corsair captain rested his scarred boot on the carronade carriage, the glowing linstock held steady above the touchhole.

"The fat factor gave you his master keys on the mezzanine," Voryn said, his scarred mouth twisting into a flat grin. "Drop them on these planks, or I touch match to powder and blow your pretty acrobat boots through the bottom of the bay."

Danika did not flinch, her flintlocks leveled straight at the captain's chest. Behind them, Boleslav settled into a low, coiled sabre stance, his blade glistening with sea brine.

Rostislav tilted his head, letting his court rapier dip toward the wet deck with an easy, theatrical bow.

"You brought thirty-two pounds of canister to extort iron keys from eighty locked merchants, Captain," Rostislav said, meeting the corsair's cold gaze across twelve paces of open pontoon. "And you forgot to check which way the harbor wind is blowing."