Being the Suun

by J. A. Culican

  A guard with two swords was the first to approach me. He did not gloat or seem excited about it.

  Well, at least he would die a smart man.

  He was fast, pushing forward strong and quick, but I was ready for him. Metal met metal in a flurry of blades that flashed in the firelight, but it was only a matter of moments before I caught both of his swords with mine, and my ax slipped past, lodging itself in his side. My hand, stitched and bandaged though it was, did not cause me any problems, apparently.

  I jerked the ax back out in a spray of blood. He looked down at the wound and then back at me, shock in his eyes.

  His swords clanged loudly against each other as he dropped them, then he collapsed onto his side. I knelt, picking up one of the blades and wrapping his hands around its hilt.

  “Go with your ancestors.” The old words came back to me. I didn't know what he believed or where he would go in the next life, but I figured it was better than nothing. “May your spirit join with those who have gone before you.”

  “Does the monster have a heart, then?” came a voice from behind.

  I stood, raising my weapons and turning to face—

  Jesper.

  I laughed.

  His face turned red with rage.

  “Your nose still looks a little crooked. It's quite the improvement.”

  He growled and lunged, quicker than I would have thought, but his anger made him sloppy. Luckily, I had been trained my whole life on how to channel that anger into steady control. I knocked his sword away and side-stepped, letting him stumble past.

  “I could do this all night,” I taunted.

  He regained his footing and turned to me again. His sword met mine with surprising force that knocked me back a step. I parried, and when he swung his shield at my head, I ducked. He’d left himself wide open, but my ax met air as he maneuvered away, putting space between us. I grimaced at him.

  He laughed. “What? Did you think it would be easy?”

  I cocked my head at him. “Do you think this is hard?”

  Estrid appeared over his shoulder. She cut down two men with one swing of her sword.

  I was done playing with Jesper. He and Aysche had never shown me any mercy. I certainly wasn’t going to show him any. I hoisted my ax up to my shoulder, my fingers loose around the hilt, the movement more instinctual than anything. It was still wet with the other man’s blood, the red liquid coating my fingers, and the once-white bandage that was wrapped around my palm was stained brown. Before Jesper even realized that I wasn’t playing by his rules, that I was done with the swordplay and the verbal sparring, I’d let the ax go. It buried itself between his eyes, just above his healing nose, and he fell backward, dead in an instant.

  Chapter 19

  I should have been happy, but instead, I just felt a sick twisting in my gut and thought for a horrifying moment that I might throw up. I’d been in fights before, spilled blood before, taken lives before, but they’d never meant anything. They’d never been personal.

  Estrid ran by, slapping me on the shoulder, effectively shaking me out of my stupor. She was excited, her cheeks flushed, bouncing on her toes. “That felt good, didn’t it? It’s been too long.” She spotted my ax in Jesper’s face and pulled it out.

  I had just been planning on leaving it there, even if it was my most prized possession. I didn’t want to look into his face again.

  She handed me the ax.

  I flexed my fingers on my sore hand and then took it from her, tucking it into my belt.

  Arun approached at a trot. “That’s the last of them.” He turned around, beckoning to us. “Let’s go. Let’s find the others and get off this island.”

  We’d left carnage behind us only to find more of it when we reached the Iron Duchess. Bodies were scattered around the ship in a gruesome circle, but it was no one I knew. No one who had come with us up the cliff.

  No, here were Arun’s dragon friends, every last one of them dead.

  “What is this?” Estrid rolled one green-scaled body over to reveal a gaping wound in its belly.

  Arun spun in a circle, looking at his friends’ bodies. “I never—” He paused, choking on his words.

  Erik was at another body, this one larger and covered in red scales. Its leathery wings were torn to shreds. “Dragons. Incredible.” It was then that I saw he was holding one of his arms close to his side, his other hand wrapped around the bicep.

  I crossed to him. “What happened?” I turned him to face me. He was covered in blood, his face and hands and clothing dirty and torn.

  “Just a scratch.”

  I pulled his hand away. It wasn’t just a scratch. His left arm was badly burned, the skin raw and red. “The explosion.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  Aria appeared then. She studied his arm and gingerly touched the burn.

  Erik winced.

  “I can help. I’m sure there are medical kits on board.”

  “Erik—” I started.

  Aria looked back at me. “I was a healer in an earlier life.”

  I didn’t know her, but for some reason, felt I could trust her. “Fine. Let me know if you need me.”

  They boarded the ship, and I turned around, searching for Arun, finding him near the edge of the trees, far away from any of the discarded dragon bodies.

  He’d dropped into a squat, burying his face in his hands.

  I approached, putting a hand on his back. It was warm and solid, and I could just feel the gentle beating of his heart against my palm. “It’s not your fault.”

  “So many have died . . .” He didn’t look up at me.

  I squatted next to him, ducking my head to try to look him in the eyes. “And so many will live because of it.”

  He looked up then. “Not because of it. In spite of it. In spite of all my stupid decisions and damned pride.”

  “Hey.” I pulled his hands into mine. My right hand was still crusted with a dead man’s blood. “Your stupid decisions and damned pride have also saved people. They saved me. Erik. Estrid. Xalph. Bertol. You can sit here and feel sorry for yourself”—I squeezed his hands to emphasize my point—“or you can get up and finish what you started. I might be able to do a lot, but I can’t fly a ship.”

  He took a deep, cleansing breath and together we stood, turning to face the Iron Duchess.

  The ship itself was a marvel, more magnificent than even the Green Gem, Luthair’s prized possession, but also obviously very different, even to a landlubber’s eye. The body of the ship was crafted from a dark, rich wood, and shaped like a sky whale. It even had strange wing-like sails hanging off the sides and the back as if they were the whale’s flippers and flukes. It had four tall masts and a fan of sails hanging loosely from the one in front, attached to the bowsprit. While I was admiring this marvel, Arun was murmuring under his breath. He approached the ship and hoisted one of the flipper-like sails.

  It collapsed back to the ground with a groan.

  “What is it?”

  He took a step back and looked up at the deck, then the masts, a hand over his eyes. “He destroyed her. He must not have been able to figure out how to get her in the air, so he . . .” He waved a hand at the ship and then I saw what I had not before—the booms snapped in half and hanging limply from the masts, their sails with long tears in them.

  I followed Arun on deck, where the damage was even more obvious. Floorboards had been ripped up, railings smashed, and the beautiful wooden wheel had been torn away from the helm. Arun ignored all of these. Instead, he crossed the deck to the mainmast and gave it a tug as if testing its sturdiness. Then he began to climb.

  I turned away as Erik and Estrid emerged from the crew’s quarters, some of the others behind them. Erik’s arm was bandaged from wrist to elbow in a clean white cloth, and the color had returned to his face.

  I would have to thank Aria, but she didn’t give me the chance. As soon as she emerged, she scrambled after Arun. I didn’t know if she had experie
nce with these airships, but maybe she could help. She’d certainly earned my trust, after all.

  Beru watched her for a moment and then turned to me, his eyes studying my face.

  Erik and Estrid followed me off the ship, and Beru followed them. From our spot on solid ground, we turned to watch Arun scale the mast using these small, wooden posts as a tenuous ladder.

  Xalph and Bertol were on the deck with some of the other miners, picking up scraps of wood and making a debris pile in the middle of the deck.

  “If this thing doesn’t fly,” Estrid said, “we’re done for. There’s no way we can go back to Barepost now. Not after what we did here.”

  “It will be the perfect excuse for Luthair to throw us into the mines,” Erik added.

  What it was, I thought but didn’t say, was the perfect excuse for him to hold marriage over my head again, use our freedom from the mines as a bargaining chip. He had to know I would do it. “Arun will get her up in the air.”

  “Her?” Erik asked with a small smile. “You’re starting to sound like him.”

  At the edge of the forest, just beyond the shadowy tree line, I saw movement. My hand went to my ax, but then the creature emerged into the clearing.

  A griffin. While certainly not harmless, they were definitely one of the more peaceful creatures on Bruhier. We’d encountered only a few in our time on the island, since they seemed to prefer to live as high as possible, on plateau tops and above the veil. He studied our group with his black bird eyes, pronged tail twitching. Then it leapt onto the tallest of the three nearby boulders and sat, the muscles in its powerful, cat-like haunches bunching together, its front bird-like claws digging into the dirt.

  It arched its feathered neck back and yawned mightily, revealing rows of sharp teeth inside a black beak. There was a white band around its eyes that made its face practically shine in the moonlight. Xalph had spotted it and was leaning over the railing, gesturing to it and talking excitedly to Bertol, who was smiling, his hands in his pockets.

  You don’t have to kill everything that has claws.

  Right. I took my hand off my ax and turned back to Erik and Estrid.

  “A female.” Erik was also studying the creature. “You can tell by her smaller size.”

  “We could still say we weren’t involved.” Estrid darted her eyes from the griffin back to us, as disinterested in it as it was in her. “I don’t think anyone who has seen us has lived. We could just . . . go back and pretend none of this happened.”

  “I would sooner kiss a griffin than do that.”

  Erik chuckled and clapped a hand on my shoulder, squeezing gently. “You might have your opportunity.”

  The griffin looked on from her spot several yards away, unamused.

  Beru watched the exchange. I could feel his eyes on my face. It took an incredible amount of restraint not to bring my hand up to cover the mark beside my eye. Though I should have been used to it by now, it still bothered me when people stared at it. Instead, I turned my attention back to the ship. Arun had reached the crow’s nest now, Aria not far behind him. It was intact, as if Luthair’s men couldn’t be bothered to climb that high. He pulled himself inside and lifted up on his toes to reach a blue box above the crow’s nest, nearly at the top of the mast.

  “What is that?” I asked, not that any of us would know. “Is that something that’s on every ship?” I didn’t remember ever seeing one on the Gem.

  “You know . . .” Erik said, ignoring my question. Maybe for once, I’d asked him something he didn’t have an answer to. “There’s still Savarah.”

  I thought back to the last time I’d seen her, arms around my brother, golden curls wild as she dangled over Bruhier. Then I thought about the tree monster, and the pile of firewood it had become at the base of the plateau. A fall like that . . . “I don’t think we have to worry about her anymore.” I glanced back at the griffin, who still sat at the edge of the clearing, and wondered if I was wrong about Savarah. If she’d been a monster wrapped in a beautiful package.

  “No one saw her fall,” Erik objected.

  “Where else could she have gone? It’s not like there was anywhere for her to hide on that ledge.”

  “I just—” Erik paused, pursing his lips. “There was something off about her, wasn’t there? I wouldn’t underestimate her, Frida.”

  I scoffed. “I wouldn’t overestimate her.” Things had been fine between us until we’d started talking about Savarah, and now the tension between us was pulled taut again. Time for a change of subject. “I think we should be more concerned with Luthair showing up and seeing us standing here with his men’s blood on our hands.”

  “I would welcome him with open arms,” Estrid declared, grinning wickedly.

  Aria and Arun made their way back down the mast. Arun reached out to steady her as she descended, his hands on her hips, and I felt a pang of something like anger that I quickly shook off.

  “Well?” I asked when they approached.

  “The sheriu box is intact, which means she can fly,” he said.

  I glanced up at the blue box and wondered what, exactly, a sheriu box was, but now was not the time to ask.

  “We just have to fix her sails and make sure she’s structurally sound, and she’ll get off the ground.”

  “What do you need to fix it?” Erik asked.

  Arun turned to Aria. “There were sail repair kits on the supply deck with bone needles, thread, and patches.” Just the mention of those supplies made my hand throb.

  “I’m on it.” Aria boarded the ship once more and disappeared into its innards.

  “The rest is just manpower.” Arun sounded confident, and I thought maybe we really would get off of this island.

  “We should have plenty of that.” Erik looked around at us and at the men on deck, still gathering bits of wood and ripped sail.

  I was about to ask how long it would take when there was a loud squawking sound. A couple flocks of birds took flight from the nearby trees, their black bodies drawing circles around each other in the sky as they scrambled for . . . What?

  The griffin stood, eyes lifted to the birds. She made a strange clicking noise in her throat.

  Was it dinnertime?

  Her wings stayed folded close to her body as she surveyed the disturbance.

  “What—” I started but didn’t finish, because then there was something else in the sky, a large, dark figure barely visible through the cloud of birds.

  My first thought was a dreadwing, but then it burst through the birds in an explosion of feathers, and I saw it was a creature like none I had seen before. Part human, part bird, all monster. Its body was grotesquely human, long limbs misshapen and grey, but leathery wings sprouted from its back with a wingspan wider than I was tall. Its humanoid face was all wrong, with a prominent brow, high cheekbones, and a flat nose. Thick, twisted horns sprouted from its forehead. Massive lower incisors reached up over its thin lips, which were stretched into a grotesque grin as it grabbed a bird out of the air and ripped its head off with its teeth. It roared, and dozens more appeared, scattering the birds, who dropped like stones to the ground.

  Erik and Estrid shouted.

  Arun readied an arrow in his bow, but the beasts flew past, a gruesome flock. And their trajectory had them heading straight for Barepost.

  Chapter 20

  I shouldn’t have cared. I hated Barepost and most of the people in it. But it had been my home for the last three years. And I knew that they were woefully unprepared for an air attack, especially from creatures like those. They were always devastated by a dreadwing, who was slow and stupid. These creatures, whatever they were, clearly had some intelligence and, worst of all, cruel intentions.

  “What were those?” Erik asked, echoing my own thoughts.

  Surprisingly, it was Beru who answered. “Ur’gel.”

  I turned to him. “Ur’gel?” Seriously? I’d heard of them only in whispered stories of the Dark War, where they were described as weap
ons created by the gods on the side of Dag’draath. They’d blended humans and animals and created something even worse than both. I remembered our father telling us that if we didn’t get to sleep, the Drutha, a particularly terrible breed of ur’gel who was said to be practically invisible at night, would steal us away. It had been just a tale to scare us into behaving. It certainly hadn’t been real. I wanted to declare it impossible but then thought of everything I’d seen over the last few years and realized I had no room to call anything impossible, not anymore.

  “We must help your people.” Beru headed away from the clearing and back the way we had come.

  “They’re not my people.” But even as I said it, I realized it wasn’t entirely true. I looked back at my brother and sister.

  Estrid shrugged and turned to Erik.

  He stood beside Arun, holding his bandaged arm close to his chest. “We can’t abandon the people of Barepost. You three go, see if you can help. I would join you, but . . .”

  “Erik, Arun, and I will stay,” Aria declared with a stern look toward Erik, who was in no shape to climb or fight with his injured arm. “We’ll get the ship in the air. You all just get back here safely, ready to fly.” Even though she spoke to all of us, her eyes were on Beru.

  What were they to each other?

  Aria was so bright, so alive, while Beru was quiet and brooding, the darkness to her light. And if he didn’t stop staring at the star beside my eye, I would shove him down the mountainside.

  “Are you sure?” Estrid asked Erik.

  He nodded, and I was glad for it.

  For once, it would be up to us to do the hard work, and it would be Erik anxiously awaiting our return.