I know I’m looking at him as though he’d asked me my favorite dance, but I go, scrambling down the steps and the boat that had been so steadily solid yaws freakishly under me. Panicked faces and the leers of the madmen screeching imprecations from the deck. Silichieh’s head and shoulders plunged into the gun truss or whatever it is—an X-shaped brace with a gun at each extremity and a pivot thing in the middle and that’s what seems to need work at the moment. He pulls his head out to switch tools, sees me, and tells me to hand him this and that. The ship jerks violently to the side as though it weighed nothing and I hear his head knock on the metal. He curses. I help him work. Suddenly he snaps the compartment closed and races past me.

“Help!” he says, his breath fast, his eyes glassy.

We’re loading shells into the gun. I’m to toss the shells to him from the box they come in and he’ll put them in and shoot the gun. He jams two lumps of wax in his ears and hands me a pair—I do the same. There’s some business with a lever and a kind of trolley-cart that carries the shells over to him and I have to pull them down by hand from the cart, keep the next cart ready etc. The guns are loaded, and he springs up on the X his legs spreadeagled standing on the guns, back bent, aiming somehow. The barrel ends protrude from the deck, but we can’t see anything outside the hold—a targetter has to direct the fire from above. Thrushchurl is up there, not looking especially alarmed, staring through the site, and Silichieh is breathing with his whole body, his thick arms hold him in place over his head as the boat rocks. Another stiff one and the ship groans loudly, feels like it’s listing back.

Thrushchurl sings something and Silichieh instantly yanks a lever firing the first gun—the crash deafens me my ears ringing. He is whirling wheels and adjusting his aim frantically, his face drawn, grinning, his movements electric—the second gun fires, then the third—I am clutching my ears—but I remember to ready the next shells. He fires all four guns, then reloads all like lightning and pulls the one trigger that will set them all off at once, the chamber dips—like a demon Silichieh is laughing reloading and firing all four guns at once again and again, standing right in the crossing of the X as they go off and shunting back with them as they fire.

*