The Pirates of Pacta Servanda (Pillars of Reality Book 4) by Jack Campbell Read Free Book Online

strong rudder, the
Gray Lady
yawed heavily, her deck listing at a high angle as the nimble ship swung to the right with an agility the larger, fast-moving galley couldn’t match. Alain caught a glimpse of white surf breaking on rocks to port as the
Gray Lady
turned away, realizing that the officers on the galley wouldn’t have heard the surf over the noise of its own passage and probably couldn’t stop in time.
    They didn’t. Realizing too late the trap they had been led into, the galley tried to turn away in the
Gray Lady
’s wake, her banks of oars halting in the air, then frantically coming down in the opposite direction to try to check the galley’s speed. But the oars began clashing and banging against each other as panicky rowers lost discipline, and the smooth rhythm of the oars fell apart. The galley turned partway under the push of its rudder, but it was too late to avoid the rocks.
    As the
Gray Lady
showed her stern to the galley, the Syndari ship suddenly shuddered violently. Alain could see oars on the side away from them, the side facing the rocks, bending and cracking. Distant cries of pain from battered oar handlers drifted across the water. The galley, having turned just enough to avoid running hard aground, bounced away from contact with the rocks, staggering like a drunkard from the force of the impact and the damage doubtless done to its hull. As the galley wobbled away from the rocks, Alain could see the bow dipping and guessed enough planks had been stove in by the collision to allow dangerous flooding of the ship.
    His attention on the wrecked galley, Alain was shocked when Mechanic Alli slapped his shoulder.
    She was laughing. “Don’t mess with momentum!”
    Mari came up beside them, grinning. “Or momentum will mess with you,” she said. Both Mechanics laughed again at some shared joke that was incomprehensible to Alain. He wondered who Momentum was and what he or she had to do with what had just happened.
    The laughter of the Mechanics died as another lingering fog bank shredded to reveal the first galley, looking crippled with its mast missing but pivoting nimbly under the push of its oars to charge again at the
Gray Lady.

Chapter Three
    “Alli,” Mari said, her angry gaze fixed on the galley, “I’m tired of watching the rowers suffer while the bosses on these galleys keep ordering them to come at us. I want whoever is giving the orders on that ship stopped.”
    “You got it.” Alain watched as Mechanic Alli knelt to steady her weapon on the ship’s rail. “What about whoever is at the helm?”
    “Dav, Bev, and I will target the helm. You take out the officers.”
    “No problem.” Alli squinted along the barrel of her rifle. “There’s a guy with a lot of gold on him. Inlaid armor. Very pretty. Hey, tell the captain to hold this ship steady, will you?”
    “Captain!” Mari called. “Hold the ship steady!”
    The captain looked startled, but passed the order to the helm. The
Gray Lady
stopped turning, cutting smoothly through the still-placid waters of the Jules Sea. The wind had steadied as well, filling the sails and pushing the ship along at an even clip.
    Asha came to stand beside Alain. “What do the Mechanics do, Mage Alain?”
    “They will use their weapons to kill those in charge on that ship,” he explained. “It matters to Mari that only those shadows of the lowest status have been harmed.”
    “Why?” Asha said.
    “She regards each shadow as another like herself,” Alain said.
    “That is very strange. Yet I recall you saying it was because Mari saw you as one like herself that she saved your life when all she knew of you was that you were a Mage. Do all Mechanics believe this?”
    “Many do not,” Alain said. He noticed Mechanic Bev tossing a puzzled look at him and Asha and guessed she was baffled that he and Asha could be having such a dispassionate conversation while the enemy galley bore down on them. “But those with Mari follow her ways of