The Girl of Salt and Iron: Fragmented Worlds, #1

By T.C. Elofson

Takayo Jin had lived as a Pirate her whole Life. She fought with them, she ate with them and when the time came she always thought she would die with too, but the gods had other plans for Takayo.

 

She's a Reflection, one of the rare people of Hisan gifted with the old power of the gods. A power that threatens to destroy everything that Takayo is.

• Language: English
• Publisher: T.C. Elofson
• Release date: Jun 8, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223938217

T.C. Elofson

T.C. Elofson is the author of three novels and lives in Edmonds, WA with his wife and two daughters.

Book preview

The

Girl of Salt and Iron

Book 1

Waterbringer Unbound

by

T.C. ELOFSON

For

Leanna

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1  

IT WAS TRANQUIL SO high up above all the grizzled men sleeping below Takayo on the deck of her ship. Even though she knew it was foolish to venture so high above the crow’s nest and the captain would certainly be upset with her, she ventured all the same. Rung by rung she went, higher and higher.

Takayo Jin knew she was nothing like those men below her. She knew she was different. The elements made her different. The dreams made her different.

Wind rushed past her face as Takayo stood rigid, balancing on a line—high up. Higher up than anyone might think to look, if it came to that. Takayo liked this feeling. Hiding away. It seemed there were always eyes on her. She could feel them—the eyes of sweaty men looking at her. She was a slender seventeen-year-old, younger than most on The Black Dog and the only woman on board.

Was that part of this thing too? Being able to feel them? She wondered.

When Takayo first saw the signs, she was completely unaware that her life as she knew it was about to change forever. She thought nothing of it at first. After all, she had always been able to do it. She could move water even as a child. It was her Reflection, the mark of an Elementalist, yet she knew nothing about what it meant to be one of those elementals. She had seen one once, all full of electric light, shimmering off in the distance like a star, like a god.

She cleared her thoughts and looked out into the blackness before her. Beyond the glow of sporadic lanterns burning in the crow’s nest, the world around Takayo Jin was black. In her seat high above the swaying water of the sea, Takayo watched through a spyglass. Little light was ever seen in the waters outside the empire city except for the shining of a small grouping of stars above the horizon. Little more than that could be seen now even with a crescent moon overhead. Below her, a stiff wind snapped at the massive sails of a wide-bodied frigate. Seen from a distance, the deck of The Black Dog below presented an odd spectacle from so high up. The sails were taut in a forceful breeze. Her wide hull cut a path through the dark, black waters.

On deck, however, long planks were covered with the scrambling feet of sixty fighting men, all uncomfortable, and stinking of wine. All trying to find a place to sit or secure some semblance of solitude, if only for a moment in the snowy night.

Takayo watched white, wintery flakes drift through the air. They floated free and careless, and descended upon the dark water before disappearing completely. They covered everything from the tall, curved masts to the thinnest iron deck nail that pierced the ship’s bones. From the large, red planks to the oddly-shaped cannons that covered the belly and stern, the wetness around them was touched by white.

Her teeth chattered as Takayo pulled her cowl low over her blue eyes and wind lashed out at her cloak, snapping it this way and that. She was a pirate, the lookout for one of the most notorious sea hags to ever sail Black Water Sea. She was a touched one, a Reflection. And yet no one would ever touch Takayo Jin. To be touched meant one thing, that the gods had touched Takayo, and passed on a simple gift.

She turned away from the force of the wind and let it have its way with her shoulders for a minute. The snow started pounding at her face, and for an instant, she asked it to stop. And it did. The wet, watery flakes kindly avoided her for a few moments and danced softly around her flesh.

But her head started to hurt, so Takayo pulled back her request, and the snow came at her once again. She closed her eyes and could feel the pain lessening in her mind.

Only for a few moments that time, she thought.

Takayo’s best record of open communication with the water had only been a minute; she’d never been able to endure the pain longer than that. Her elemental control over water dehydrated the cells in her brain, causing her pain. This was one of the few facts she was able to glean from the light dreams she had on that fateful morning when she had awoken with her gift. Nothing but a rudimentary knowledge of her god’s gift remained from the dreams. Only a few words stuck in her mind. Words like elemental control and alignment. Words that, to this day, meant nothing to her. Yet she knew she was an Elementalist. She had heard the word before. Usually spat in disgust by the pirates bellow her.

Spying on the emptiness of the waters gave her solitude, and Takayo liked her solitude. While she was up high, clinging to the tip of the foremast, no one could find her. And she liked things like that. Hell, she liked life like that. Her solitude was on its tenth year now. Once her parents were gone, life had become exceedingly difficult. There was no longer the shield of her home to hide behind. Her uncle passed away not long after her mother. Well, passed away is a tricky term, but knifed in the streets just didn’t have the same ring to it for Takayo. After that, she learned very quickly how unforgiving the streets of the Seven Cities could really be.

However, up there beyond the nest, no one would ever touch her. No one would try to take advantage, because no one could get close to Takayo Jin.

Takayo’s headache lessened, but not by much. Reaching a hand up, she rubbed at her eyes, and a stream of water that had been massing in the cup of her cowl gave way and rolled down before her face. She watched it attentively, and for a moment she hated the water. She hated everything about it and what it represented for her. But as it touched her, Takayo’s mind awoke.

The water had the effect on her that it had always had. Her eyes got bright and her mind cleared. It was the water that made her different. It was the water that surrounded her in seclusion and made her an outcast. But most of all, it was because of the water that she had no one she could depend on, no one she could talk to. Sometimes she thought she was more water than anything else in life. How much of her was even flesh and bone anymore?

She watched the iron red door at the end of the galley. It was the only door on The Black Dog that she cared about; no other door would open for her. Then she heard the creak as the old hinges worked to open the door.

Oh, ash and embers, Takayo! Fyth cursed at her, sticking his large head into the snowfall. Get down from there! Thoss wants you back in the nest now!

Fyth was an uncoordinated boy. Not nice, but... well, nice enough to suit Takayo. But he was a little naïve for someone who had grown up in the Ru. He was kind enough to her, but Takayo still wasn’t sure about him. The Ru was the poorest district of Shi, one of the neighboring areas of the empire. It was there that Takayo had first encountered him.

She wasn’t sure if he was working some kind of angle or not. Maybe he just wanted to get close to her and take advantage. Strangely enough, if someone had got it into his mind to trap Takayo in a dark corner of the ship somewhere, he would unexpectedly be overcome by a massive headache. An agony so debilitating that all Takayo had to do was walk away. She took their water, dehydrating them so quickly that their minds couldn’t take the pain. Of course, doing so gave her headaches as well, but a throbbing pain under her skull was better than being raped any day, she reminded herself.

There was no real threat that the Black Water Pirates (as they called themselves) would ever be more than just a rabble, but Takayo took risks for them just the same, and she did it each night gladly. She was, after all, a pirate. This life gave her shelter, of course, but nothing more than a corner of the room to sleep in and a box to call her own. Not that Takayo had anything to put in the box, but it was hers. For her first few nights after joining the pirates, when the others had gone to bed in their own corners of the darkened hull, Takayo sat up holding her box, hoping that one day she would own something to put in it. But that box was more than she had owned before she stumbled across Fyth in the ports years before, so she treasured it.

She was about to protest Fyth’s message and give some excuse about better sight advantages when she peered back into her spyglass. There was something out there. It wasn’t far off either. The winter storm spoke to her, giving away the secret.

What is it? Fyth asked, looking up at her with salt in his voice.

I don’t know. I saw something... Contact along the port side! she finally yelled, grabbing for the length of chain next to the crow’s nest. She wrenched on the chain furiously and a bell sang out loudly in an attack of firing pings.

Clang, clang, clang.

What is it? Captain Thoss said, running out of the Captain’s quarters, his door racing open.

Warship. Looks like man-of-war class, and she’s huge.

Come into the wind and release all halyards! the Captain ordered.

Aye, Captain, Sir, Fyth said back.

At once, The Black Dog turned sharply into the night wind and line let out in a whirl. The sails snapped against the winter gale and the large frigate came to a standstill.

Pirate hunters, Sir, Takayo yelled down, still looking through her spyglass.

We can make a run at her men when they come in to take us.

But, Capt—

Better we die with blade in hand, I always say, my girl! Captain Thoss shouted, cutting Takayo off.

She didn’t like the thought of that. The warship was enormous. There must be close to two thousand sailors in her belly and an equal number armed on her deck. The men on The Black Dog wouldn’t stand a chance against such a beast. She watched as the warship moved closer and closer. Across the water, Dorrish voices shouted accented commands. She looked down from the crow’s nest and Fyth and others close by hurriedly primed pistols, jamming them into belts and holsters.

Then it happened.

An explosion rocked the night with a flash of light that erupted the Black Water Sea all around them. For just an instant, Takayo got a clear look at the ship. It was monstrous. Cannon fire roared, echoing off the stern, ripping through sail and wood.

Takayo yelled, leaping out of the crow’s nest as shards of splinters whipped by. She landed with a slap against the wet deck and pain shot through her legs and lower back as another cannonball tore through the banister close to her face. Wood splinters fragmented around her like shrapnel.

Fire! the Captain yelled. Fire all stern gun decks!

Cannons close by rumbled in a cloud of smoke as a volley of lead balls spit from the mouths of weapons as the monstrous vessel moaned closer and closer. Takayo had little faith in their odds. But The Black Dog came back full tilt.

The hull of the attacking warship