Thirty-Two Pounds of Retribution

Twelve paces of brine-slick pine stood between Rostislav Benov's rapier and the smoldering brass linstock in Captain Voryn's fist, and the open touchhole between them was already packed with dry priming grain. Rostislav wanted that match head quenched before the privateer captain could drop his wrist. If the thirty-two-pounder carronade belched inboard, thirty yards of reinforced timber would vanish into the bay, taking three sects and sixty pontoon hulls with it.

"Wind won't save you from canister, boy," Voryn barked. The privateer dropped his weight, iron cutlass cocked high, and jabbed the brass stick toward the vent.

Rostislav did not wait for the spark. He kicked off the wet planks, throwing his torso into a flat horizontal spin. The Thousand-Crane footwork bit hard into the cedar, converting harbor roll into forward torque. He skimmed across the deck six inches above the pooling bilge, rapier drawn tight against his ribcage.

Behind him, two reserve loaders rushed from the shadows of the magazine bulkhead, raising heavy boarding pikes to impale his ribs.

A twin crack rattled the iron carriage. Danika’s double-barrel flintlocks spit orange fire past Rostislav's shoulder. The balls took both pikemen in the breastplates, knocking them backward over their own powder buckets in a spray of loose saltpeter and tallow.

"Keep moving, aerialist!" Danika called, dropping the smoking pistols into her belt loops and drawing her serrated parrying dagger in a low, circling crouch.

Voryn swung his heavy cutlass down in a butcher's arc. Steel whistled, aimed to sever Rostislav's neck as he slid.

Rostislav caught the carronade's iron cheek with his left palm, planting his weight on the cold metal. Instead of pulling up, he tightened his core, kicked both heels upward, and vaulted straight over the gun barrel. The cutlass bit deep into the gun carriage with a shower of oak splinters. Hanging inverted in the air for half a heartbeat, Rostislav snapped his right boot outward. His heel caught the brass linstock with surgical force, snapping the arm and pitching the burning cord overboard into the frothing brine.

The smoldering coal hissed once and went black in the dark water.

Voryn roared, wrenching his cutlass free from the timber. He lunged with a brawling thrust aimed straight for Rostislav's throat.

Rostislav dropped from the carriage, parrying the heavy naval blade with a whipping circle of his court rapier. The flexible steel shrieked against the cutlass, deflecting the blow into the gunwale. But Voryn had the mass of a dockside ox. He lowered his shoulder, slamming his bulk into Rostislav to pin him against the iron cascabel.

Against the bulkhead, rotational momentum died. The air left Rostislav's lungs.

A sudden deluge hit the command platform.

Boleslav leaped from the lower staging, silver sabre flashing in wide, sweeping arcs. Rotational qi surged through his arms, dragging fifty gallons of harbor spray from the flooded scuppers into a spiraling vortex. The wall of pressurized water slammed across Voryn’s chest like an oak spar, washing the captain three paces back toward the stern ramp.

"Mind the velvet, Benov!" Boleslav shouted, shaking seawater from his cuffs with practiced disdain. "This doublet has survived three boarding teams and a tureen of duck sauce. I will not have it ruined by pirate sweat."

"Your embroidery is magnificent, Boleslav," Rostislav gasped, rolling to his feet and recovering his guard. "Now help me turn this monster!"

Voryn staggered against the railing, coughing salt water. He looked from his dead gunners to the three duelists, then down at the stern skiff moored to the pontoon outrigger. With a savage curse, the privateer vaulted the low cedar rail, tumbling into the launch where two oarsmen waited at the sweeps.

"Cast off!" Voryn bellowed, hacking through the mooring painter with his cutlass. "Pull, you dogs! Pull for the breakwater!"

The cutter dropped into the swells, oars thrashing the dark water as it surged toward the open harbor.

"He's running for the fleet," Danika said, stepping up to the gun platform. She drew a fresh horn of priming powder from her belt. "If he reaches the flagship with the scuttling codes, the galleasses open fire immediately."

Rostislav grabbed the heavy ash handspike propped against the gun carriage. "Then we don't let him reach the breakwater."

Boleslav grabbed the opposite lever. "You intend to fire an eight-thousand-pound shore gun from a floating platform? Clan masters train twenty years on solid stone to absorb such recoil."

"Then don't stand behind it," Rostislav said with a grin.

Danika sprang onto the carriage, inspecting the vent. "Touchhole is clear. He double-shotted it—canister wadding packed tight over a thirty-two-pound solid iron ball. But the traverse tackle is fouled with severed rigging."

Rostislav drove his handspike beneath the rear axle. "Boleslav, give me the wave! Pivot on the left truck!"

Boleslav braced his boots against the deck ringbolts, his broad shoulders knotting beneath damp velvet. Rotational qi rippled through his stance, transferring the buoyant lift of the pontoon into sheer mechanical leverage. Rostislav matched him, throwing his full weight into an acrobatic vault across the lever arm.

Wood groaned against cast iron. With a harsh screech of bronze axles, the eight-thousand-pound carronade slewed across the deck, its wide black muzzle swinging outward through the gun port until it pointed dead across the water.

Danika aligned the notch with the fleeing cutter sixty yards out in the chop. "Elevate two degrees! He's catching the ebb tide!"

Rostislav kicked the quoin wedge forward under the breech, locking the heavy barrel at the waterline.

"Primed!" Danika shouted, tipping a measured charge of fine grain into the vent from her horn. She snatched a smoldering lamp from the scuttle rack and jammed the brass wick straight to the touchhole.

"Fire in the battery!" Rostislav cried.

The powder flared with a blinding flash of white light, followed by an earth-shaking roar that shook the entire floating pagoda to its pontoon keels.

The carronade leaped backward against its breeching ropes with catastrophic violence. The heavy hemp tackle stretched taut, groaning under thousands of pounds of kinetic recoil. Rostislav vaulted over the carriage as it surged past, while Boleslav diverted the violent deck vibration through a spiraling heel pivot that dispersed the shockwave harmlessly into the bay.

Sixty yards across the churning water, the thirty-two-pound iron shot took the privateer cutter amidships.

The oak hull did not merely split; it disintegrated. Planks, oars, and brass fittings erupted skyward in a towering pillar of white foam and splintered wreckage. Captain Voryn’s bellow cut short as the launch collapsed into the dark chop, vanishing beneath the waves in a churn of salt and floating timber.

Silence rushed back over the lower battery deck, broken only by the steady lap of water against the pontoons and the hiss of cooling bronze.

High above, the festive lanterns of the Morovian Pleasure-Rotunda flickered back to life, tier by tier, casting gold and crimson light across the calm inner harbor. Faint cheers echoed down from the grand mezzanine where eighty merchant factors crowded the balustrades in the sudden quiet.

Floating among the wreckage twenty yards off the pontoon outrigger, a reinforced brass sea-chest bobbed in the foam, buoyed by cork fenders.

Rostislav flicked his rapier tip, snagging the chest's rope beckets, and hoisted the dripping iron-bound box onto the battery deck with a theatrical flourish. He severed the padlock with a clean rapier thrust and kicked the lid open.

Inside lay stacks of crisp parchment bearing official seals—and the signed privateer letters of marque endorsed with the double-anchor crest of the Sovereign Trade Council.

"Look at that," Rostislav said softly, pointing his blade at the damp wax. "Captain Voryn wasn't an outlaw. He was an employee."

Danika knelt by the chest, her sharp eyes scanning the signatures. "The harbor council wanted the Rotunda cleared and the merchants terrified. A pretext to confiscate the entire fleet."

Across the breakwater, three long, mournful horn calls sounded through the mist. The imperial mortar galleasses were turning into the wind, trimming their lateen sails to withdraw toward the naval basin.

Yet out in the harbor narrows, half a dozen low, black-hulled watch cutters detached from the shadows of the quays. Their running lanterns were shuttered, their muffled oars cutting silently through the chop as they formed a closing ring around the drifting pleasure-pagoda.

Boleslav rested his sabre across his shoulder, his vanity suddenly absent from his voice. "The bombardment is canceled. But I don't think they intend to let us dock."

Rostislav closed the brass lid with his boot, looking out across the dark water at the silent cutters.

"Then we had better find out what else Lady Zornova keeps in her powder lockers," Rostislav said.