“Can you stand?” Ripka moved to offer her a hand up. Honey’s expression had gone dark. She glared at the trapdoor like it’d stolen her lunch money and called her mother a whore.
“Let them in,” she said.
“No.”
“Please?” she turned wide eyes and pouting lips on Ripka. Ripka stifled a laugh, thrusting her hand toward her once more.
“You’ll see ’em soon enough. Now get up, if you can.”
Honey hobbled to her feet, favoring her bleeding foot. The dribbles she tracked across the tiles weren’t enough to be worrisome, she wasn’t going to bleed out before either rescue or doom befell them. Still, she was hurting. Slowed. The best of them in a fight, Ripka had no doubt of that, incapacitated. If that door gave way before the Larkspur arrived, they were in for a world of hurt.
“Wish they’d stuck me instead,” Nouli muttered, and Ripka found she agreed.
“No sense in dwelling on it. Keep the bodies centered as best you can, no one put a bit of themselves on that door if you can help it.”
They clustered back around the door, sweating, fidgeting, poking corpses back into place each time they shifted. The sun bore down on them. Ripka spat to curse the sea for denying her its icy bite right when she actually wanted it. She understood now why the old sailors cursed the water as much as they worshipped it. Fickle bitch, indeed.
“Captain,” Enard said. Something in his voice made her shrink within herself. Whatever he had to say, she didn’t want to hear it.
“Yes?” she asked anyway.
“It appears our pursuers have diversified.”
“What are you talking about?”
He pointed with his cutlass, his form perfect despite his exhaustion. She followed the line of his blade to a roof across the rec yard. A handful of guards were rigging up a flier, getting it ready to set out toward their empty docking post. Her stomach fell. There was no cover here – not from sight, and not from crossbows. They couldn’t hide, and they couldn’t go down – who knew how many jackals were waiting to tear them apart past the door.
“Fucking Honding.” She kicked a corpse, but it didn’t make her feel any better.
The trapdoor jerked, one corner lifting, and a gauntleted hand shot through. Before she could think she kicked it, swore as bright motes of pain exploded in the corners of her eyes. Wood groaned, the others piled their weight on. But the guards had leverage, now. It wasn’t enough.
The first one through fell to Enard’s cutlass, throat opened to grin at the sky as his head tipped back and he fell down the ladder. From the thumps and shouts he’d taken a few behind him with him, but it was only a temporary reprieve. Bottleneck or not, they’d be swarmed in moments.
She hooked her aching foot under the flung-open trapdoor and struggled to heave it back closed. Nouli helped, huffing and puffing as he shoved at the blood-sodden wood. They got it to the apex, shoved it down, and it bounced right back up.
The head of a door-breaking ram crashed through. Where they’d dug the thing up, she had no idea, its paint was peeling and its irons rusted – but it shattered the door all the same, wrenched the hinges free with squeals. She staggered back from the explosion of splinters, as did everyone else. Just what the guards had wanted.
“Close the neck!” she snapped, but it was too late. One was up, two. They couldn’t fell them both before the others poured through. Their advantage was lost.
“Behind me,” she ordered Nouli, and sliced down a woman who closed on her, chopping her like she was wood, trying not to think of the friends and families and passions she was destroying with every strike. Watch-captain Leshe, killing guards like they were sent for slaughter. Her stomach boiled with shame, but she dug her heels in, stood her ground. They’d kill her for this. No one saw a trial who felled a body in a uniform with their fellows around.
She figured she deserved it.
Somewhere on the other side of the swarm boiling up through the broken door Enard’s roar of effort turned into a screech of pain. She winced, letting the man facing her get inside her guard with her fear. He scored a cut on her arm and she hardly felt it as he pressed the advantage, shoving her back into Nouli, turning a clipped duel into a shoving, grunting match that was likely to end up on the ground. Someone always died when a fight like this went to the floor. She was tired. Worn out. Ripka steeled herself, hoping they’d let Nouli live in the end.
Someone screamed, and it wasn’t from pain or anger or death, it was a shriek of pure, raw, fright. A shadow flickered over the melee and other shrieks joined in, the guards breaking, scattering. Ripka staggered back, dumbfounded as her partner squirreled away from her, Nouli’s hand on her back the only thing that kept her on her feet.
Through the sky twisted a massive beast, a serpent wrought of silver and cloud, its writhing body undulating above their heads as its great maw snapped down, breathing crystals of ice.
Ripka froze, momentarily stunned. A thing of legends, a creature out of fairy tales... Like a doppel. Or, she recalled, an illusionist. Frantic, she searched the sky, saw a gleam of pearlescence by the dock. Pelkaia. Had to be.
“To the dock!” She grabbed Nouli’s wrist and ran.
Steps pounded after her, she didn’t know whose, prayed it was Enard and Honey but didn’t dare turn her head to be certain. Nouli huffed along beside her, not questioning, not even as she tore full speed across the spit of wood and stone that stretched out into open sky. She saw the gleam again. Thought there was something like a smirk in it.
Death by blade, or by falling. Either way she was destined to die. Might as well risk it.
Her boots hit the last board of the dock. Nouli screamed. She leapt.
Hardwood slapped her feet, her knees. She crumpled, landing hard, awkwardly as she couldn’t see her goal. Nouli splayed away from her, rolling like some flicked larva. Someone grabbed her arms and hoisted her up, dragged her out of the way and dropped her back to the deck where she lay on her back, arms wide, staring at the blue sky and its slight gleam.
“Knew you’d see it.” Pelkaia stood above her, sweating, ruffled, but smirking. Ripka never thought she’d be pleased to see that smirk.
“The others–”
Pelkaia cocked her head, smiled. “Arrive now.”
Honey and Enard leapt through the air, appearing out of nowhere, arms windmilling and eyes wide with horror as they tumbled to the deck. Enard was bleeding, seeping his life out his side, and Pelkaia’s crew rushed him, bundling him up so quick she began to doubt she’d ever seen him in the first place. Honey crawled over and flopped down beside her, smiling.
“You jumped,” Ripka said, realizing that neither Honey nor Enard could have known what they were leaping toward.
“He said it was all right. Said the captain wouldn’t ever lead us astray.”
Honey trailed her fingers through Ripka’s hair, and she didn’t know whether she wanted to laugh or cry from relief. Pelkaia helped her back to her feet and snapped for one of her crew to come see to Honey’s wounds.
“Need an apothik?” Pelkaia raised her brows at the weeping wound on Ripka’s arm.
She looked at it, almost startled it was still there, and shook her head. “In a moment. I want to watch this place fade away.”
“As you like. Aft rail will have the best vantage.” And then Pelkaia was gone, shouting orders as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
Ripka limped her way to the aft rail. Tibal lingered there, his back hunched, his arms hanging over the rail with his hat in his hands as he worked the brim around. She came up beside him, eased her weight against the railing, and watched the mist roll back from the Remnant as the Larkspur changed course for the Scorched.
“Long time,” she said, after the silence had grown too wide.
“Mmhm,” he said.
She fidgeted with the frayed hems of her sleeves. Didn’t he have anything to say to her after all of this? After all she’d been through on behalf of their mutual schem
e?
“Where’s Honding?”
He spat over the rail, shoved his hat on, and stomped off back toward the cabins. Ungrateful man. No matter what spat had brewed between Tibs and Detan this time, he could at least answer her with words instead of bodily fluids. Ripka stared out across the fading Remnant, too choked with questions to give voice to any particular one.
Chapter Forty-Four
Aella had given Detan a room to share with the man he’d been chained to when Callia’d held him captive, because she’d thought it was funny. Old friends reunited, but this time free of locks, she’d said, winking, and he’d wanted to vomit all over her pretty little slippers to show her what he thought of that particular notion.
But he’d smiled, and made nice with the old man, and told himself again and again this was the best course. He was doing this for a reason. Not just for his own control, but for his Aunt, for Ripka, and... and Tibs, too, if he’d ever come around to believing a word he said again.
Even with the layer of sel gone to hide the Larkspur, he’d grown too anxious beneath that low, stone roof, craving nothing but the sky and the stars and the wind above his head. And so he’d left, wending his way across the island, testing the length of his new leash. Aella’d let him wander all the way down to the shore, to a crumbling cliffside with a scrap of a wall left from what had once been a lookout post, and didn’t send anyone looking for him.
She wasn’t worried about him. That galled him more than anything.
He leaned against the wall, rested his arms over the top of it, and stared at the sky until his eyes watered. Not tears. Not exactly. He’d have plenty of time for those, later. This was something like penance. A taste of the pain he knew he deserved for what he’d said to Tibs. A taste of the pain for never getting the chance to say what he wanted to Ripka.
He stared, and his eyes dried out, and they watered again. The cold seeped into his knees, his chest. If he merged with the stone, joined with rock and myth as a statue grown here on the island, he wouldn’t have minded. Then maybe someone might take pleasure from his life someday, reading the fairytale of the Remnant’s stone man. Or a dog would come along and piss on his leg.
He shook his head. Ripka would whip him bloody for being so melancholy. He had to gather himself. To get ready to fight a war of a different flavor than Pelkaia desired.
Aella stepped behind him, a waif of a shadow thrown over his shoulder. Small as she was, that shadow felt heavy across his back.
“This is a long way from the yellowhouse,” she said.
“Wanted to see how far you’d let me go. How far that trust of yours extended.”
“You presume I trust you, Honding?”
He traced the path the Larkspur had taken away from him, clinging to the faint evidence of its passage in the smearing of the clouds, and allowed himself a tight smile.
“You presume your trust matters?”
She scoffed and stepped beside him, laying her hands on the crumbling stone top of the wall. “You are in my power now. Even you must see that.”
His laugh started out as a low rasp, then mounted to a raving roar. He knew he must sound mad – wondered if indeed he had finally cracked – but found little point in caring. When his laughter had subsided to hiccupping chuckles, he wiped the wet from the corners of his eyes and faced her. Her small face was slack, eyes wide with surprise.
She would never believe he had been turned, not really. Would never believe he’d constrained his spirit, bent himself to another’s will. And so if he could not fake docility, he would have to fake madness. Flaunt arrogance. It was not so far a stretch.
“I have knelt for greater masters than you, and risen whole,” he said, voice rising as he warmed to the task. “I have stood in the mouth of a firemount constrained by my greatest fear and still, still I stole from you everything I sought to take. Even now I stand before you beaten, and yet you cannot see behind the captivity – cannot see that while you crow your triumph I have stolen the most valuable mind in all the world from beneath your stunted nose.”
“What do you mea–”
“Be quiet! Your ignorance does not compel me, nor do your threats. I have been trading my freedom for victory the whole of my sorry life. Gloat, if you will. Toast with your cursed sycophants and send glowing words back home to your master. But do not, not for a single beat of your blackening heart, think you ever hold power over me. Your triumph is temporary. I have stolen the sky from you and yours, stolen the bread from your mouths and the heart-knot of your scheming. Do you think I cannot take a city from you? A continent? A future?”
She ruffed her hair with her fingers, and his heart panged with how young she looked. “Your honesty endangers you, Honding.”
“Oh, Aella. I will be honest with you. And still I will win.”
“You are without your friends here, be reasonable.”
“Tell me, do you truly believe that my being without my friends makes you safer?”
She was quiet for a while, staring at the clouds through which the Larkspur had left. Though her cheeks were still rounded with youth, and her build slight and willowy, she held her experiences around her shoulders like a cloak. Wrapped herself in the cruel details of her past. When she spoke again her voice was quiet, smooth. It was the most honest tone he’d yet to hear from her.
“I will not crow victory at you, as you say. Instead, I will ask you a single question, Lord Honding.” Her hand disappeared within the folds of her white coat. She pulled something small, something gleaming, from her pocket. It clinked as she set it on the top of the stretch of wall between them. She pulled her hand away.
A single syringe lay on the grey stone. Its steel tip glinted in the faint starlight. The smoky-red liquid within shimmered, swirling with its own currents. He’d know it anywhere. The same fluid that Callia had injected him with in Aransa, opening him up to greater power and greater shame. The same fluid that would, if Callia were to be believed, enslave him to be near selium at all times. A leash, tied to his blood. One that’d been tugging at him, quietly, since he’d first tasted it near on a year ago now.
He licked his lips, and could not take his eyes from it.
“This is your price. This is what it costs, to learn from me without imprisonment.”
“That wasn’t a question,” he rasped.
She lifted the syringe. Held it poised. Ready. Extended her hand for his arm. “Some questions do not require words.”
Detan Honding knelt.
Acknowledgments
While the mad rush of drafting a novel is an inherently solitary act, this story wouldn’t exist without the advice and support of a great many wonderful people.
First and foremost, thank you to my long-time writing group, Earl T Roske, EA Foley, and Trish Henry, for your always insightful critiques. And, of course, for suffering my caffeine-hyped ramblings about plot, characterization, and worldbuilding.
Thank you to my Secret Agent, Sam Morgan, and the whole JABberwocky team for backing up this crazy thing that’s become my writing career.
Thank you to Marc Gascoigne, Phil Jourdan, Michael R Underwood, Penny Reeve, and the Angry Robot team for all your support and insight.
Thank you to Jay Swanson, whose drawings of cats on airships never fail to buoy my spirits.
Thank you to all the wonderful authors who have offered me their support and advice over this last year. There are just too many to list. Your generous spirits and immeasurable talents are what keep the genre community going strong.
Thank you, too, to all the bookstores and wonderful booksellers who have hosted me.
And of course, thank you to Joey Hewitt. I wouldn’t be half so sane without him.
Last but not least, thank you to you. That’s right, you, dear reader, for allowing me to spin you a tale. I hope you’ll stick with me for many more to come.
About the Author
Megan E O’Keefe lives in the Bay Area of California and makes soap for a living. (It’s
only a little like Fight Club.) She has worked in arts management and graphic design, and spends her free time tinkering with anything she can get her hands on. Megan is a first place winner in the Writers of the Future competition, volume 30.
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meganokeefe.com • twitter.com/meganofblushie
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Busted!
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An Angry Robot paperback original 2016
Copyright © Megan E O’Keefe 2016
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Megan E O’Keefe asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
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UK ISBN 978 0 85766 492 1
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Break the Chains Page 33