Detan cursed and hugged the rail to keep from falling. Out on the spire the watchers rallied – damnably efficient folk – and scampered towards their own flier, the craft that’d brought them up to the jetty so that Detan could kiss the sands from the skies.
Not a quick ship, not compared to the sleek beauty of the Larkspur, but quick enough to get them into arrow-firing range. Detan had long ago learned never to trust his luck, nor his skin, to poor aim. Pressed against the rail, he shifted his weight back and forth in a shuffling little dance, waiting for the crew to do something. Anything.
They didn’t.
“Begging your pardon, Pelly old girl, but some sel wouldn’t go amiss right about now.”
Pelkaia raised her hand, and for one mad moment he thought she would slap him. He cringed back, and she rolled her eyes. She ripped her false face off and flung it toward the watchers. Detan scrambled to extend his much clumsier sel-sense and grab the sel, then float it over to the stone arch between the jetty’s edge and the flier’s dock. The watchers were drawing close.
Sweating something fierce, he forced the fistful of incandescent gas against the arch’s keystone and opened himself to it, venting his frustration.
For just a breath, the siren call of the sel surrounding him – more than the gas in the buoyancy sacks below – threatened to overwhelm him. A ring of sel orbited the ship, shifted to a mirror shine, a great swollen hoop ripe and ready for him to explode. A flutter of panic itched up his arm and he cut off his senses, digging his fingers into the rail so hard his nails bent backward.
Stone groaned, men cried out, and the whole thing went to the pits in a puff of dust and the flailing of blue coats running to clear the avalanche. He slumped, giving up his weight to the rail in exhaustion, too terrified to look back and see how large his conflagration had grown.
A cheer went up from the crew behind him, a good rousing tally-ho of the spirit, and he forced himself to plaster a smile back on his sweat-slick face and whirl around to take a bow. He liked to tell himself his knees didn’t wobble and his arms didn’t shake. If they did, the others were too polite to bring it up.
“With me, clown.” Talon-like fingers dug into his shoulder. Pelkaia marched him forward in a neat line, the crew’s eyes stuck to them like wool to a fine-toothed cactus. He smiled at them, and managed a few little waves, but each time he did, Pelkaia dug her nails in deeper. By the time they made it to the confines of her cabin – a space that was once his cabin – he thought his shoulder would be crushed to bits.
Though the unstable nature of ships didn’t allow for a lot of decorative leeway, Pelkaia’d done her room up in full Catari style all the same. Indigo prayer mats embroidered with crisp white stars hung from the walls, strings of beads carved from all the rock types the Scorched had to offer looped her bed rail. It seemed Pelly didn’t mind discovery of her bloodline anymore, no matter its outlawed status with Valathea. Detan wasn’t sure if that was good for his schemes or not.
He kept his trap shut, tamping down the urge to make a smart remark about being dragged straight to the bedroom, and tried to look contrite. “I am so glad you got my message!”
Her sun-bleached brows shoved together. “Your message...? Oh, oh gods above and below, the rumors–”
“Tibs is such a little gossiper.” The moment she closed her eyes in annoyance he flit his gaze around the cramped room to see if there was anything he could use to convince her to help him in his schemes. Too soon her eyes snapped back open, and he shrugged, palms out as if in offering.
“And what were you going to do if I hadn’t received your so-called message?”
“Die of shock, more than likely. You’ve created a few choice rumors of your own, you know. Stories of a black ship snaking through the night, picking up any sel-sensitives with the tiniest deviation of ability. You’re damned near a folk legend, Pelly. Say, I wonder if anyone’s written a song about you? Something stompy, with a banjo. Oh! I bet–”
“Shut up.”
He did.
“What do you want, Honding?”
“A long, fulfilling life. Possibly a chilled drink and one of those pastries with cactus pear jelly in the center. Do you have any?”
“Honding!”
He ducked his head to fake being chagrinned and ran one hand through his dusty, greasy hair. He had to get the contrition just right to win her to his cause. Had to measure the subtle shift of his weight to one side, as if uncertain, the soft blush of rising embarrassment, the catch of emotion in his throat. It was a real good thing Tibs had made him practice so many cursed times.
“I need your help, Pelkaia. Ripka and New Chum, they’re in trouble.”
Her eyes narrowed, but she leaned forward, interested. “What’s happened?”
“We were up in Kalisan... Sightseeing.”
“Sure you were.”
“Well, Ripka caught a rumor from some old watcher buddies that Kalisan’s warden was preparing to make a move on some local deviants. He’d planned on wrapping them up with a bow and handing them over to the whitecoats for a favor. Wasn’t any way we could get in touch with these deviants, understand, so we poked around a bit. Found out the old warden was right particular about a certain notebook. Ripka went for it – took New Chum with her – without telling me or Tibs and got caught.
“Rumor is, she managed to hide the book somewhere before she got brought in, but no one knows where. She and New Chum got shipped off to the Remnant prison to sweat out their worries and consider how much smoother things might be if they give the crusty old warden back his intel. We tried to intervene during the transport, but missed the chance, so, you see–”
Pelkaia held up a silencing hand. “You expect me to believe Ripka would make a move like that without assistance?”
“A lot’s changed since you skirted off with my ship,” he snapped, not needing to fake indignity. “And Ripka is her own woman. Just because she’s taken berth on my flier doesn’t mean she tells me every cursed thing.”
“If you recall, you were contracted to steal this ship for me.” She laid a hand against the smooth wood of her cabin wall. “It was never meant for you.”
Detan snorted. “More the fool you were, thinking I’d intended to just hand it over.”
“And yet you did just hand it over.”
“Only because you’d drugged the others! What was I supposed to do? Fight you off with my back crisped like I’d taken a nap on a firepit? Pits below, Pelkaia, you’ve never given us – never given me – any choice in your games. Everyone bends to your demented agenda, or you break them. Sometimes I wonder why I didn’t leave you to rot in that cursed hole of a city. Why I didn’t let Thratia run you through.”
“Everyone always bends to my agenda?” She rose up, shoulders straightening, chin lifting, fury sparking bright in her eyes. Detan took a hesitant step back, trying to get a leash on his temper. Tibs would kick his teeth clean out if he blew this chance over a squabble.
“Pelkaia, look, I don’t want to–”
“I don’t care what you want,” she growled, fists clenched at her sides. “You come onto my ship, ask me for help, and then insult me? Maybe Ripka and New Chum got themselves arrested to relieve themselves of your company.”
“No matter what you think of me, those two deserve–”
“Deserve a better friend than you.”
A heavy tattoo pounded on the door before it was wrenched open. The sturdy man who’d freed his wrists stuck his head in and raised both brows.
“Hate to interrupt the domestics,” he said, “but it appears someone is trying to board us. Rinky little flier. Got Happy Birthday Virra! painted on the side.”
“Tibs!” Ignoring Pelkaia’s scowl, Detan pushed past the first mate and spilled out onto the deck, casting around for the flier’s familiar silhouette. It bobbed in the air off the starboard side, a collection of rather large spring-loaded harpoons pointed at it by the stable hands of the Larkspur’s crew.
&nb
sp; “Stand down!” Detan ordered, and received nothing but blank stares and a few light chuckles. Right. Like they’d listen to him. Plastering on a fake smile, Detan sidled up as close as he could to the rail and squinted against the silvery light glinting off nearby clouds.
Tibs stood on the flier’s deck, cutting a rather obvious target, one hand cranking the wheel that powered their rear propeller while the other hand kept his hat stuck to his head. Poor sod must be wearing himself out, fighting a headwind while trying to keep up with the much larger – and faster – Larkspur.
“Stand down,” Pelkaia said, voice raw with irritation but modulated with the tones of easy command. Her crew shrugged and swung their weapons aside, lounging against the harpoon stands as if they did this sort of thing every day. Detan swallowed. Maybe they did. Maybe Pelkaia had grown far more militant than he’d guessed.
“Wave the boarding flag, Coss.”
The first mate scrambled to a canvas sack tacked against the cabin’s exterior wall and pulled out two bright red flags on stubby sticks. He flashed the semaphore for safe-to-board, and Tibs eased the flier toward the Larkspur’s sleek hull.
Pelkaia’s crew hopped to work. Although their expressions were bright with curiosity, they didn’t say a word. Their shoulders were hunched, each move made with mechanical precision. Someone threw a tie-rope across and Tibs anchored it, wiry shoulders slumping with relief now that he didn’t have to keep pace with the speedier ship.
Once secured, Tibs hauled himself up a rope ladder. The first mate and another man helped him to crest the high rail. Tibs dusted his breeches with one hand and tipped his hat brim to Pelkaia.
“Much obliged, captain.”
“A pleasure to see you, Tibal,” she said, then jerked her head to the first mate. “Show these gentlemen to a cabin, Coss. And lock the door.”
“Wait just a sands-cursed moment…” Detan began.
“We’ll drop them in Petrastad.” She turned her back on Detan while she spoke with Coss. “They can find their own way from there.”
With a sheepish grin, Coss grabbed Detan and Tibs by the upper arms and steered them midship. He opened a door to a small sleeping cabin, and shoved them inside.
“Sorry ’bout this,” Coss said, and locked the door anyway.
Tibs caught Detan’s eye and tipped his hat back. “Conversation went well, then?”
Detan grimaced. “Beautifully.”
Chapter Three
The Remnant’s newest inmates arrayed themselves in a snaking line, each and every one shivering from the cold in their thin linen jumpsuits but doing their damnedest to hide it. Ripka stood with New Chum to her right and an unknown woman to her left, squinting against the salt-laden wind that whipped her hair across her face. She’d been on the Remnant’s island for less than a day, and already she hated it.
Though the sun was just as bright as it was over the Scorched, the Endless Sea sucked up the warm rays and held them, making the beach waters balmy but the air crisp and unforgiving. For Ripka, who was used to wearing her heavy coat all over Aransa’s sun-bleached streets, the exposure to the cold made her teeth chatter.
She curled her toes in her boots, an old watcher trick to warm her feet. A little chill wasn’t going to deter her from her mission. She would find Nouli Bern. She would get him to Hond Steading before Thratia’s invading army knocked on that vulnerable city’s doors. With his engineering genius on their side, with his inside knowledge of Thratia’s methods, they could not lose. Or so she told herself.
Ripka had lost one city to Thratia’s thorny hands. Had watched as Thratia spun the city into fear and traded its residents into slavery in exchange for weapons. She would not lose another.
They waited on a balcony overlooking the rec yard, their backs to a building that was used for all the bureaucratic minutiae that went along with running a prison. Three identical buildings hemmed in the rec yard, narrow balconies banding the five stories of each.
The captain sauntered along the line of new intakes, somehow managing to peer down at every inmate, even those who were taller.
“Welcome to the Remnant,” he said when he’d made a complete pass and returned to the center. “My name is Captain Lankal, and I’ll be your director for the duration of your stay.”
Nervous chuckles all around. The only way off the Remnant was to be recalled by a Valathean court to fight for the Fleet and your freedom. That, or take a swim with the sharks surrounding the island. Both options had an equal chance of survival.
“You stand in the bird’s nest,” he continued, gesturing to the stone beneath their feet. “A balcony which all must pass through to enter, or exit, the docks that harbor airships to and from the mainland. For many of you, this will be the last time you stand upon these stones. But if you behave yourselves, and are kind to your fellow inmates and guards, you may just see this view again.”
A sober silence spread throughout those gathered, one the captain let percolate. His warnings held no sway over Ripka – she planned to quit this place before the month was out and the monsoon season came – and so she took the opportunity to glance over his shoulder to the rec yard below.
There, the prison’s population mingled. As the Remnant was never at capacity, men and women were allowed the common areas together, and the privacy of personal cells to retreat to during the night. These inmates were, it was said, the vilest scrapings of the Scorched’s bootheels. The most ruthless cutthroats, traffickers, and political prisoners. The empire’s general opinion on the matter was that if you were tough enough to deserve a sentence here, you were tough enough to weather the presence of your fellows’ company.
If Nouli really was down there amongst those monsters, then how he had survived here so long was a mystery she was itching to solve. Nouli was a genius, a renowned polymath, not a murderer or a raconteur. Though he had served the empress by engineering her machines of war, as far as Ripka knew he hadn’t seen a lick of real violence in his life. He wasn’t equipped to survive in a place like this. If he had gone mad, or died, before Ripka had the chance to whisk him to Hond Steading then this whole scheme could be for naught.
Thratia’s forces were preparing to march. She needed Nouli to be here. To be safe, and hale of mind, so that he could lend Hond Steading his insight.
Ripka peeked at New Chum, whose freshly dyed jumpsuit named him Enard Harwit. He’d claimed the first name was his own, but had said nothing about the family moniker. He observed Captain Lankal with the calm assurance she’d come to admire in him, his hands at ease and his face relaxed. His simple, steady presence reassured her. If anyone could help her rescue Nouli Bern, it was Enard.
The captain interrupted her thoughts, “You’ve all been assigned your bunks, your toiletries.”
Her “welcoming kit” weighed down her pocket. A cloth wrapped around a tooth stick, a lumpy brick of soap, a scrap of washcloth and a chit with her cell number painted on it. She’d lucked out and gotten a cell next to Enard. The guards didn’t much care about friends sticking close together. They searched the cells often enough to make sure no one was up to any sort of shenanigans.
“But you’re going to have to wait to freshen up. It’s midday meal time, and I expect every last one of you to file down there, get your plates, and sit your asses down without a word. No fights, no jostling. Play it real nice, and don’t no one try and out-tough one another, understand? That sort of behavior gets you a swift trip to the bottom of the well to think about what you’ve done.”
They walked down a narrow stairway, just wide enough for a single person to manage without bumping their elbows – a good point to bottleneck in case of a riot. The woman behind Ripka, a slender thing with scraggly blonde hair and sunken eyes in a sun-darkened face, was breathing hard by the time they reached the bottom.
“You all right?” she whispered over her shoulder.
“Quiet!” a guard midway down the line barked.
The woman narrowed citrine eyes and spat her d
ispleasure. Wonderful. Ripka suppressed a sigh and an urge to ball up her fists. She needed to keep on being bland, indifferent. She couldn’t let her conscience get in the way.
This wasn’t the watch, and this wasn’t her stationhouse. The prisoners’ health should be none of her concern. She slowed her pace down the steps, pretending to take extra care on the slick, grey stone, so that the woman behind her wouldn’t have to move so fast to keep up.
As they filed out into the rec yard, Ripka surveyed the inmates gathered there, looking for anyone who might be Nouli. Detan had described the engineer as a lean man of middle years, his short, tightly curled hair already gone to grey, and topaz eyes forever hidden behind wide spectacles.
Scanning the crowd, she couldn’t imagine a man like that here. Couldn’t make her mental image of a wizened, learned man shove gruel down his gullet while growling at his neighbors to stay back. Not that any of the prisoners behaved quite so gruffly – though she could have sworn she saw one man snarl at their line.
They were given bowls of beige porridge, pocked with what Ripka hoped was dates, and directed to an empty trestle table. The bench was hard, cold, and the splintered tabletop marked over with a half dozen stains she didn’t even attempt to recognize. Someone had carved a stick figure of a woman bent over a barrel onto the tabletop. Charming.
In the divot of the rec yard, the wind was not so bad. The sun bathed her shoulders, warmed her through the jumpsuit, and the knots in her back muscles relaxed.
Beside her, the slender woman coughed and coughed, each whooping exhalation like a crane’s complaint.
“Would you shutthefuckup!” a woman seated across from them hissed, using an arm to shield her porridge from the ill woman’s coughs.
Ripka tensed. The guards drifted away, giving the prisoners a wide berth. Was this a part of their initiation to the Remnant? To see how they handled emergent problems on their own?
Break the Chains Page 2