Page 40 of Prima

“Fuck,” he mutters. “It’s a Risshvai seaplane.”

Has it come for the sub? Or for the boy the sub didn’t manage to kill yesterday?

“Come with me!” she shouts. “I have an autocannon.”

They run across the beach to the lagoon and leap onto her raft. Aeroplanes are rare enough that she did not expect to encounter any along her path—and she didn’t—but not so rare that her mother would have allowed her to travel solo for six months without means of defending herself.

He leaps into the hatch after her. Following her directions, he pulls the autocannon components out of storage and heaves them onto the raft above. The hundred-and-fifty-kilo autocannon is meant to fit together within four minutes—they assemble it in three.

He goes down again and shoves up two forty-kilo belts of rounds. “The plane is electric—that’s why it makes no sound. But it’s also superlight, carries no heavy artillery and only one gun.”

Once the first coil of linked ammunition is loaded into the autocannon, she cranks the barrel and fires a barrage of rounds at the plane.

It dives lower and lands on floats that descend from its belly. A man emerges from the cabin and waves a white flag while standing on the plane’s port wing.

“It’s the eleventh prince,” murmurs the boy.

The one he followed into Risshva, the one who may be forming a clandestine alliance with Risshva on behalf of his full brother, Prince Four.

The one behind the attack yesterday.

“So…expect treachery?”

He nods.

“But why is he on the surface?” An aeroplane loses its advantage when it’s no longer airborne.

“Only the front of the plane is reinforced, so it’s better off facing you head-on—your ammo would puncture the rest of it like it’s made of paper. But also, I can see Eleven’s body servant in the plane. The man is said to have an unusual concurrent ability.”

“What is it?”

His hand opens and closes—for the first time she senses real fear in him. “I don’t know—everyone who’s ever witnessed it is dead.”

A reciprocal fear rises in her as nausea. “Let’s not witness it then.”

His reply is barely audible. “Don’t do anything brave. Pay ransom, if you have to, but stay alive.”

What about him? Would he stay alive by acquiescing? Whether he possesses solid evidence of Prince Eleven’s treasonous activities, that the man has shown up in a Risshvai seaplane? He has not come for a parlay.

“Should we just blow them to pieces?” she murmurs.

“I would, except I’m not sure what the body servant will do if he survives the first strike.”

The seaplane, which has been gliding forward on its floats, at last comes to a stop some fifteen, twenty meters beyond the midget sub, which is too big to enter the lagoon formed by the atoll.

Prince Eleven, still standing on the port wing, drops the white flag in his hand and leans against the side of the plane. “Nineteen, my beloved sibling, it took a while to find you. I thought you would have taken the sub in the direction of the capital but you towed it in the opposite direction.”

He studies Lanzhou. “And who’s your friend, Nineteen?”

“You don’t recognize the ghost of Eighteen, all grown up?” says the boy, Prince Nineteen of Dawan. “He tells me it was you who put the nerve flayer into his ear.”

A shadow of fear crosses Prince Eleven’s face, but he laughs, a sound halfway to a screech. “Very funny. Now why don’t we speak of something of actual consequence? Give the sub back to me. When my brother Four ascends to the throne, I’ll see to it that you are rewarded and that your sister will be able to marry a man of her choice.”

He grins, showing a mouth full of teeth.

The boy exhales, an uneven breath. Is he pondering how to respond? No, he’s bracing for an imminent attack, his finger on the trigger of his projectile sidearm.

She tenses, her muscles almost locking up.