A hesitant cheer went up from the crew, a bit worse for their exhausted and water-logged state of being, but Detan wasn’t one to quibble with their enthusiasm. He was busy trying to nudge Tibs away from his viper-glare showdown with Pelkaia, and desperately clamping down an urge to point out Coss had gone ahead and issued an order against his captain’s wishes.
“Coss,” Pelkaia said, finally relinquishing Tibs from her stare. “My quarters.”
She strode off, Coss trailing her heels, and Detan let out a ragged, nervous laugh.
“Some ally we’ve got in our corner. I’d have rather made friends with a weaver-spider.”
Tibs gave a slow, ponderous shake of his head, rain water and bits of ice slewing off the brim of his hat. “Knew what she was when we called for her.”
“Thought we did, anyway.” Detan sighed and shook out his hair with his fingers. “Too bad she didn’t come with a convenient warning label, like our friend Commodore Throatslitter.”
Tibs cocked a surly grin at him. “How does Captain Ruthless sound?”
“Bah. That’s too on the nose, old chum. I’d prefer something truly sinister. Like Colonel Cuddles.”
“Awful.”
“See? Perfection.”
Detan threw an arm around Tibs’s shoulder and began to steer them back toward the captain’s podium so that they could help with the ship’s landing. There was no telling how long Pelkaia would be busy dressing-down poor Coss.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Pelkaia held her tongue until the door to her cabin closed. She let her hand rest on the cold metal knob for a while, feeling the chill of the world through her fingertips. The rain and the wind were loud enough to drown out any shouting, but she didn’t want to shout at Coss. The last thing she wanted to do was to piss the man off when he was already so clearly displeased with her. She took a breath, pushed her shoulders back, and turned to face him. She almost recoiled from the look in his eye.
“You gave an order I didn’t issue,” she said carefully. Not an accusation. Just raw facts.
He leaned back, putting distance between their bodies, and crossed his arms over his chest. The defiant lift to his chin would have been enough to piss her off on any normal day, but after Petrastad... She was too tired to be angry with him. And wanted, desperately, to know why he was angry with her. She was surprised to realize she wanted to fix that. To repair what she’d broken and beg amends.
“I gave the order you should have given. That’s my job as first mate, isn’t it? Interpreting the best course of action when you are otherwise unable to do so.”
“I was right there. I was perfectly capable of making the call.”
“The right call?”
She pursed her lips. “Yes.”
“And that’s where we disagree. Captain.”
She kept her face a mask of placid calm, wishing to the blessed stars that she had some more sel with her to hide her real features. Having her true skin exposed to the air when she was otherwise vulnerable made her scalp prickle with anticipation of disaster. If only she had another face to hide under, then she could pretend a little longer that Coss was arguing with that person – not her.
“You disagree, you take it up with me in private. That was our deal.”
“Doing so now, ain’t I?”
Her fists clenched. “You know clear as the skies are blue what I mean. You knew I wouldn’t have made that call. Knew it would have made me look weak to override you after you’d called it out.”
“Maybe you need to look weaker.”
“What in the fiery pits is that supposed to mean? I’ve a ship to command, a war to win. I’ve no room for weakness, especially not in front of my thrice-cursed crew.”
“Is that what you’re doing? Fighting a war?”
Her mouth gaped open. “Whose ship have you taken berth on, Coss? Where do you think you are? I’ve been fighting this war since I spilled Faud’s blood in Aransa, and I won’t stop until Thratia joins him in the dirt.”
“That’s just the problem, isn’t it?”
“Gods,” she muttered and pinched the bridge of her nose between two fingers. “For the love of a clear sky, explain what you’re getting at. I’m too sandblasted tired to wiggle my way through your nonsense.”
“Nonsense?” He snorted and shook his head. “Let me make the problem real clear for you, captain. You’re fighting a war. Where’s your army?”
“My crew–”
“Those aren’t your soldiers!” She clapped her mouth shut from pure shock at his outburst. “Your crew out there, those souls you order about like they should know the meaning of military discipline. They’re not soldiers. They never have been soldiers. They’re deviant sensitives, yes, and some of their abilities may lean toward a military persuasion, but they’re civilians, Pell. Skies above, they’re refugees. You’re shoving refugees in the path of the monster that’s oppressed them and demanding they scream your battle cry. Demanding they draw blood, when half of them haven’t slaughtered so much as a chicken before in their lives.”
“I seem to recall you saying they were ready for this,” she snapped. “I seem to recall you telling me to give them more rope, more freedom to get involved.”
“I said they were ready to save their own people, ready to learn to carry arms in defense. I never said they were ready for this...” He grasped the air as if he could squeeze the words he wanted out of it. “This wholesale slaughter.”
She sat hard on the bench before her vanity, and let her hands dangle between her knees. She stared at her hands, wondering when she’d gone from rearing dear Kel to spilling blood in his name. She clenched her fists.
“I never asked for this.”
“Neither did they. This is your crusade, and it could be theirs, too, but you’re pushing them too quickly. Expecting them to take up blades of battle right after setting down their damned cheese knives. That’s not a group of killers you have out there. And that’s a good thing. But you’re scaring the salt out of them with all this let-the-watchers die talk. Shit, Pell, some of them are people who just weeks before we picked them up would have happily gone to their local watch with any trouble in their lives. Petty thieving isn’t murder. The two don’t translate.”
“It’s Honding,” she protested. “He’s pushed things forward too quickly, didn’t give me time to get them acclimated to the fight–”
“Honding’s a catalyst, I won’t deny it. But he’s only showing off the cracks that were already there. It’s not his fault the crew’s shying from your fight.”
“It’s mine.”
“Yes,” Coss said, and the word weighed heavy in her heart. He knelt before the bench and reached out to take her clenched hands. With his big, scarred fingers he eased her fists open, smoothed out the taut and spasming muscles of her palms, then held her, gentle as could be. She dared to pick her head up, to look him in the eye. He smiled, and she felt a little lighter.
“Come on, captain. Let’s get back out on deck and show them how strong that heart of yours can be.”
“Lead the way,” she said, and stood, hands still wrapped in his.
“I already did.” He dropped her hand and gestured toward the door. “The rest is up to you.”
Chapter Thirty
Pelkaia showed a deft hand at the captain’s podium as she angled the ship toward the island, descent propellers heaving away to overcome the ship’s natural tendency to stay on a neutral plane. Detan had declined the crew’s offer to join them on the cranks for those particular propellers. He had, after all, a sore back from wrestling the ship through the storm and rather felt he deserved the rest.
He crowded the fore rail with a damp Tibs at his side as they dropped through the thick layer of cloud cover, following the faint wisps of selium leaking out from the watcher ship. Between cloud and rain and sleet, Detan’s clothes and hair were plastered to his body, a permanent shell of cold. He crossed his arms to huddle against the wind, but didn’t find the ex
perience much better.
“Wish I had a hot whisky,” Tibs said, mirroring Detan’s hunkered posture.
“Wish I had a hot anything.”
“We’ll get a fire going on the island.”
“So our benevolent captain can roast us over it?”
“You know what? I’d be all right with that about now.”
The cloud peeled back and the island revealed itself. Little more than a thumbprint of land clinging to life amongst the waves, the rocky shore was dotted with wind-bent trees, clustering toward the center of the island in a great green mass. A narrow stretch of empty beach ringed the north end of the island, the only place large enough to anchor a ship the size of the Larkspur with any hint toward safety. Sure enough, the ship angled that way, even though the watcher craft was tangled up in the trees a good ways down the shore. Detan flinched, glancing away from the wreckage, and told himself the moans were the wind groaning through the trees.
The crew fired the anchor harpoons from the fore and aft, the ship jerking as the heavy bolts bit into the soil and held tight. Rope ladders were slung over the rail, the weary crew shimmying down them with what little medical supplies they had to spare strapped to their backs. Pelkaia’s crew was in poor enough shape to care for themselves, let alone the crashed watchers. But this was the least they could do for their fellow men and women. And maybe, just maybe, they could convince a few watchers they weren’t such monsters after all.
Stamping some semblance of warmth into his feet, Detan joined the crew at the ladders and dropped down to the rough rocks of the beach. His heels sunk in, squelching as he tromped across the sand. Hond Steading may have been a bit north and prone to a chill breeze on occasion, but Detan reckoned his bones weren’t bred for this kind of cold, and the sticky mist clinging to him wasn’t doing much to help the situation. Huffing breath into his hands to warm them up, he stomped circles on the beach as the rest of the crew spilled down the ladders. Jeffin stayed behind to work on repairs. Detan was grateful for that. The man’s simple presence irked him.
Something dark and lean nestled in the curve of the northern stretch of beach. Detan squinted, brought a hand up to shield his eyes, then realized there wasn’t any sun to shield them from.
“Hey, Tibs,” he called. “You see that?”
Tibs tipped up the brim of his hat to see better. “Looks like a shed. Or a boat.”
Detan snorted. “A real boat? Ridiculous.”
“Either way, we’re not alone on this island.”
Essi wandered over to them and peered at the structure. “Who’d want anything to do with this anthill?”
Detan and Tibs exchanged a look. “Someone wanting close proximity to the Remnant,” they said in unison.
Detan spun around and sought out Pelkaia, standing off to the side with Coss and Laella. He raised his voice to carry across the wind and distance. “Pelly, arm your people! We’ve got company on this pits-cursed island.”
Pelkaia raised the cutlass she had been fitting into her weapons belt. “Had you expected us to charge in after the watchers without protection?” She eyed him pointedly. “Although it occurs to me that, despite best efforts to the contrary, we are substantially under-armed.”
“Err, yes, of course. Carry on,” he said and kicked at a clump of seaweed.
“Going to tell her about the key?” Tibs asked, drawing a curious glance from Essi.
“When she doesn’t have something pointy in her hand, yes.”
“What key?” Essi asked.
“The key to that mouth of yours.”
She kicked sand over Detan’s wet boots and stomped off to join the rest of the crew.
“You got a way with kids,” Tibs said.
“I am a charmer.”
“Didn’t say it was a good way.”
They tromped across the beach, joining the back fringe of Pelkaia’s group, and followed the spearhead of her armed crewmembers along the rocky shore toward the last sighted location of the watcher craft. They didn’t have far to walk. The moans of pain reached them before the sight of the wreck did.
The airship had snagged in the treetops on its way down, spilling its crew in a heinous spiral across moss-covered boulders and the rocky shore. Tie-lines had snapped under the force of the crash. Those who escaped relatively unscathed were at work gathering their injured on softer ground, but Detan counted only three watchers on their feet. The rest were broken shades of themselves.
Detan had gone three steps before he noticed Tibs had halted. And then he realized his mistake in bringing Tibs here.
Watchers – men and women in uniform – strewn broken and weeping across the sands. The heady tang of iron-rich blood on the air, the eerie mist of selium escaping through the treetops. The twisted wooden wreckage. All things Tibs had seen before – must have seen before – in darker times when he served the empire. When he kept the machines of war breathing fire from above.
“Tibs, why don’t you go back to the ship and keep an eye on Jeffin? With strangers on the island, wouldn’t want the kid getting out of his depth.”
It was a weak excuse, and they both knew it, but Tibs took it like a rope thrown to a drowning man. He nodded, gaze glued on the damaged bodies, and sucked at his teeth.
“Reckon that’s a good idea.”
Detan waited until Tibs was a good halfway back to the ship before he turned his attention to the damaged watchers. He cursed himself for a fool for dragging Tibs out here at all. He should have known what the scene would look like. Should have known it’d hit Tibs as hard as rounding a corner into a whitecoat party would hit Detan himself.
Pelkaia’s cutlass was sheathed as she talked with the injured watch-captain, but Laella and Coss had their blades out. They held them low and at ease, but the threat was clear enough. Detan lingered behind the group and ignored their conversation. He had no stomach for the petty dance of threats they were playing.
A watcher woman lay on the sand not far from where he stood. She leaned against a dripping boulder, legs splayed out before her, swimming in pools of red. Her eyes were closed, but her chest rose and fell with ragged breath. She didn’t appear strong enough to have pushed herself up on her own, which meant her fellow watchers had propped her up. And then left her to die.
Detan ambled over and sat on the sand beside her, ignoring the salty wet seeping through his backside. He was already wet enough, he could handle a little more discomfort to see this woman through to the endless night.
“Hi,” he said. Her eyelids fluttered. “I’m Detan.”
She tipped her head toward him, lolled it against the rock. One eyelid was swollen shut, the other half-open, but the eye behind it bright. Alert. He shifted in the sand so that she could see him without having to crane her head.
“Alli,” she said. “Have you come to pick us off?”
“No.” He shook his head. “We’ve come to help, if we can.”
She swept him from his crossed legs to his ruffled hair with her one good eye. “I can’t say we would have done the same for you.”
“That’s all right. I don’t blame you.”
“You should.”
She coughed, her shoulders shaking. Detan waited until the fit had passed before he spoke again.
“You were just doing your job. Trying to keep Petrastad safe. I understand that more than you might think.”
She chuckled. “Do you, now? I didn’t realize you were an expert on municipal matters, though that explains the ease with which you infiltrated our tower.”
He grimaced. “I don’t mean to belittle what you do.”
She waved him to silence. “No. No. But I meant to belittle you. I’ve heard that some people get calm when they’re facing death. That they go into the dark with grace and dignity. Turns out I just get surly.”
He thought of Ripka, standing on the roof of a jailhouse in Aransa, wearing a coat much like the one Alli wore. Thought of her lifting her chin, facing the Black Wash and her impending death
with pride and calm. He’d admired her for that. He found he admired Alli, too.
“There’s no good way to go,” he said.
“I suppose there isn’t.”
She fell quiet for a while, her good eye gazing out to sea. Detan wondered if his presence was a comfort or a hindrance. If he were bleeding his last in the surf, he’d want someone there to witness it. To sit with him while his blood mingled with the salt and the world drew in to nothing all around him. But he worried that he might be imposing. That maybe she’d sent her watcher fellows away, and that’s why she was all alone here. Could be she was only suffering his presence because she lacked the strength to tell him to get lost.
He shifted, making to rise and leave her to her peace, and her eye snapped open as far as it could. He stayed.
“I took this job for the money,” she said.
“Isn’t that why people take jobs?”
“Hah. You’re as cynical as I was. No. Lucky for the two of us, it isn’t. Some people don the blues because they want to help. They care. I came to, in time, but to start with... Well, my husband was a sel-miner, fell to bonewither earlier than most. Shuffles around the house like my grandpa used to, and he’s only forty. There’s the stipend for retired miners, but the good medicines... They cost.”
“So you didn’t take the job for the money.”
“Maybe not. But don’t mistake me, Detan, I’ve a taste for fruit pies the stipend just wasn’t covering.”
He laughed and rummaged through his trouser pocket. “It’s no fruit pie,” he said and pulled out a waxpaper-wrapped bar of sticky honey and crushed nuts. “And it’s probably wet and salty, but here.” He broke off a small corner and placed it on her tongue. She swished it around and smiled.
“Salt’s a nice touch.”
He took a bite and grimaced. “If you say so.”
They sat in silence for a while, sharing the ration bar while the pool around her legs got darker and her skin grew paler. When the bar was finished, he scrubbed his hands in the wet sand and wiped them pointlessly against his Fleetman’s coat. The sun sagged against the horizon, pink-crimson spears radiating through the sky. He looked away, not liking the color of the sky any more than he liked the color of Alli’s face.
Break the Chains Page 23