by Jeff Minerd
“Not bad for your first time in a new ship,” he said, offering her what he thought was an encouraging smile.
Brieze frowned and glowered at him. He was patronizing her! How dare he.
“Let’s try something easier,” he suggested. “Let’s see you put this ship into a dive.”
Diving was easier than hovering. All you had to do was lower both wing flaps and pull the front edge of the sail completely down. The bow would dip downward and the ship would drop with its own weight. A sly smile crept across Brieze’s face. Her black eyes glittered with mischief. She wanted to wipe that condescending look off Tak’s face, and she knew just how to do it. They were cruising above Sharpspur, a small rocky outcrop of Selemont. Sharpspur was not a habitable place, just a collection of giant, jagged stones poking knifelike out of the surface clouds.
Perfect, Brieze thought as she put the ship into a dive.
Objects fall slowly in the buoyant atmosphere of Etherium. A diving airship is no exception. Still, as the sail went slack and the prow split the air, they picked up enough speed to get the wind whipping past their faces and their adrenaline flowing. The ship pointed down at a forty-five degree angle, but it looked and felt to Brieze as if it were pointing straight down. She and Tak hooked their feet under straps on the deck and held on tight to stays.
“Okay,” Tak said, his voice a little shaky. “Come out of it now.”
Brieze’s sly smile spread wider. The ship plunged faster. Every taut rope began to quiver and hum. The empty sail chattered. The jagged stones of Sharpspur rushed up from below.
“Now!” Tak’s voice cracked with fear. “Now!”
That was enough to satisfy Brieze. She was just about to bring the ship out of its dive when something hit the side with a loud whump! The impact made the ship shudder.
Whump! Something else hit with an explosion of feathers.
Whump! Another one…
Birds! It was a flock of birds! They couldn’t see the ship and were flying smack into it.
The birds only distracted Brieze for a few seconds. But a few seconds was enough to turn her reckless dive into something truly dangerous. Sharpspur was close now, really close. Close enough to see splotches of lichen on the jagged rocks. She raised the front edge of the sail and brought the flaps back to neutral. The ship levelled out, skimming through the sky with the speed it had gathered.
The keel below them hit one of the jagged tips of Sharpspur with a crunch!
The ship bounced like a stone skipping across water.
Crunch! The keel hit again and the ship bounced and lurched sideways, nearly capsizing. Brieze wrestled with the tiller, keeping the ship upright. Tak was thrown off his feet and came down on the deck hard.
Crunch! They hit one last time and then they were free of Sharpspur. The ship skated out into open sky. Brieze got it back under control.
Tak picked himself up off the deck. His face was pale. “You did that on purpose…why?”
Brieze was shaken, and the truth spilled out of her. “To wipe that damn smug look off your face.”
Tak’s eyes widened and his jaw dropped. Then his mouth snapped tightly shut. He shoved his hands into his pockets. He looked hurt and angry at the same time. Brieze hung her head. She felt awful. Like sick-to-her-stomach awful. She’d always suspected that, deep down, she was a lousy person. Now she knew it. She’d nearly killed them both, just to play a trick on him and gratify her ego. She concentrated on flying the ship back to the island. Tak sat in the bow. He didn’t give her any orders.
It was a quiet trip.
A small wooden dock projected from the island’s edge at a secluded spot not far from the wizard’s house. As Brieze steered the ship toward the dock, Tak wordlessly got up and stood in the bow, holding a mooring line. Brieze executed a good docking maneuver, flying into the wind, angling the sail farther back the closer they approached, creating drag and slowing the ship to a crawl. The bow gently grazed the dock and Tak stepped off. He made the ship fast with the mooring line. He held a hand out to Brieze to help her out of the ship. But he avoided her eyes. She took his hand, and then they were standing awkwardly together on the dock.
That little dock happened to be where they first met. Brieze had confronted Tak and his friend Luff there as they were trying to sneak onto the island. Tak and Brieze had pointed arrows at each other and exchanged less-than-polite words. And Tak’s friend Luff had executed a much-less-than-perfect docking maneuver, crashing into the dock and throwing Tak off the bow of the Arrow to land like a sack of turnips at Brieze’s feet. The ghost of a smile flitted across Tak’s face as he remembered. Being on the little dock softened his mood.
“I’m sorry,” Brieze said in a small voice.
He put his arms around her. She circled hers gratefully around him. Their hearts were still thumping fast.
“I was being an ass,” Tak said. “I’m sorry, too.”
“I’ll never do anything like that again. Promise.”
Tak smiled. “It wasn’t the first time you almost got me killed,” he said with a sigh. “Probably won’t be the last.”
She punched him on the shoulder. “You do just fine almost getting yourself killed all on your own.”
They hugged again, and neither said anything for a long time. They were realizing that soon Brieze would be gone, and it would be a long time before they saw each other again. Tak finally broke the silence. “This isn’t like last time, is it? When you went to talk to the Gublins, and you wanted me to come along, but you wouldn’t say you wanted me to come along?”
She lifted her head and looked into his shining brown eyes with a wistful smile. “No, this isn’t like last time. I promise.”
Part of her yearned for Tak to go with her. A big part. But then she imagined him being there when she confronted Kaishou Fujiwara. She was ashamed of her father, ashamed of the man she knew him to be. It would be an emotionally charged meeting. All those feelings she tried so hard to suppress might burst free. The anger, sadness, shame, and who knew what else? She didn’t want anybody to see her like that. Couldn’t let anybody see her like that. It would make her feel more exposed and vulnerable than being stripped naked.
That was the reason she needed to make the journey alone.
“If you’re not back in the spring I’m coming to get you,” he said.
“Deal,” she said.
Something hit the dock with a clunk they felt in the soles of their feet. Brieze’s ship, secured by only one mooring line, pitched and yawed about, listing and banging against the dock.
“Let’s get a stern line on it,” Tak said.
When they tied up the stern as well as the bow, the ship stabilized. It strained against the ropes, trying to rise, bobbing on the gusts of wind. The sky was shifting from noon blue to afternoon lavender, and the ship shifted color with it. It looked like a ship not made from wood and nails and rope, but molded from the same mysterious stuff the sky was made of.
Tak smiled at the way the sly little ship seemed so eager to take to the sky again. “Hey,” he said. “What are you going to name it?”
The answer came to Brieze instantly. Her black eyes sparkled. “The Devious,” she said. “I’ll call it the Devious.”
Tak grinned a rueful grin. He felt sorry for anyone in the Eastern Kingdoms who would be unlucky enough to run afoul of the Devious and her captain.
“Perfect,” he said.
FOUR
Brieze chose the hour before sunrise as her departure time in the hope it would discourage people from showing up to see her off. She would be expected to make a farewell speech. It was traditional. She hated talking in front of people. So the fact that a small group of them had, in fact, gathered on the little dock in the predawn dimness, shivering in their cloaks, irritated her. Her mother was there of course. And the wizard. But there was also the wizard’s cook, whom Brieze sometimes chatted with about recipes. And there were the goat herder twins Thomas and Timothy, who had an almost telepat
hic connection to their goats. There were a few women from the household—friends of her mother. And there was Tobias, standing awkwardly off by himself.
The next moment, Brieze was irked that more people hadn’t shown up. The scanty attendance at her sendoff confirmed, in her mind, that people didn’t like her. But she pushed her irritation aside. She couldn’t have it both ways. And she couldn’t blame people for not showing up. She knew she didn’t have the knack for making friends. Growing up on Footmont, she hadn’t had the practice. The children there had mostly pretended she didn’t exist, when they weren’t being outright cruel. And on the island, where she was not just the wizard’s apprentice but his daughter too, she’d always been surrounded by an impenetrable aura of awe. People didn’t know how to reach her through it, and she didn’t know how to reach them.
The Devious hung heavily from its mooring lines, a phantom ship the color of dusk. Yesterday, Brieze and the wizard had loaded it with supplies and equipment. She tossed her pack full of clothes and personal things into the ship, then turned to face the crowd. But the wizard saved her from having to make her speech right away. He spread his arms wide and recited the benediction for travelers. It was long, and had a lot to do with winds and currents and weather, and also with asking for guidance and protection from ancestors in the realm above. If you believed in that sort of thing. Brieze didn’t, and she knew the wizard didn’t either. But the words were traditional.
After that, her mother stepped forward. Patentia’s nose was red with cold, and her eyes were puffy and pink with crying. She didn’t want Brieze to go. They’d done nothing but fight about it since Brieze came up with the idea. But that morning they’d tacitly agreed to a truce. Brieze knew her mother was worried about her safety, but she also suspected her mother was afraid of whatever truth she would bring back from the Eastern Kingdoms.
“Promise me you’ll be careful.” Patentia squeezed Brieze’s hands.
“I promise.”
“And be wary of strangers.” She squeezed tighter. “You’re too trusting.”
Brieze huffed and rolled her eyes. “I will mother.”
“And stop scowling like that. Nobody likes a scowler.”
Brieze made an exasperated grunt in the back of her throat and tried to pull her hands away. But Patentia held on tight to her daughter’s hands, then slipped something into them. Something hard and cold. It was the gray heart-shaped stone Kaishou Fujiwara had inscribed. The one she’d tried to throw over the side of the island. “Take it,” Patentia whispered. “If you find Kaishou, show it to him. He’ll recognize it and know you’re telling the truth.”
Brieze nodded and stashed the stone in an inner pocket of her flightsuit.
Patentia gave Brieze something else. A heavy drawstring bag, which felt like it might contain marbles, except that it smelled of cinnamon and mint and clove. “Candies,” Patentia said. “I know how much you like them. And I know you didn’t think to pack any for yourself.”
Brieze’s eyes glistened. It was just like her mother to be clingy and annoying, and then do something to make her heart flood with gratitude and remember that she loved her. She hugged her mother, hard, and Patentia hugged just as hard back. For a moment, Brieze remembered when it was just the two of them, in their little hut on Footmont. Her mother had been the center of her world then. In all her life, the two of them had never been apart for more than a few days. The realization she would be gone for months and months sank in, and it felt heavy. Patentia began to cry. Brieze felt tears welling up, too. But there was no way she was going to let herself cry in front of that group on the dock. So she stuffed those tears down, disengaged from her mother, and stepped back.
Everyone looked at her expectantly. It was time to make her speech.
She hadn’t prepared anything to say. She’d kept putting it off and putting it off, and finally she decided just to wing it. Now, she regretted that decision. She never knew what to say to people. And, somehow, whatever she said always came out wrong.
She cleared her throat. “Well,” she said, attempting to sound friendly and informal, “I’m glad at least some people showed up to see me off.”
Nope. That didn’t come out right.
“Not that I expected more people,” she hastily added.
They stared at her blankly.
“This is just the right amount of people. I wouldn’t have wanted any more or any less.”
Some of them shifted uncomfortably. They avoided her eyes.
“What I mean to say is I’m grateful to you all for braving the cold and dark to come see me off.”
There, that was better. That was something a normal person would say. She got some approving looks for that.
Unfortunately, that was all she had.
She struggled to come up with more, but all that issued from her throat was a prolonged “Ummmm…uhhhhhhh…ummmmm,” which, as it stretched out into the silence, became a kind of confused, desperate gurgle. It was the kind of noise that made it seem she wasn’t right in the head. Finally, the unpleasant sound resolved itself into the traditional “May the winds be kind to you.” That was it. That would have to do. Brieze offered the crowd a wave and what she hoped was an apologetic smile, but it came out as a funny little grimace.
“May the winds be kind to you,” a few people muttered back, clearly underwhelmed, offering her grimacy little smile back to her.
That was all Brieze could stand. She was desperate to get away. She hopped into the Devious and raised the sail. Someone undid the fore and aft mooring lines and gave her a shove away from the dock. The heavy ship began to sink as she struggled to get the angle of the sail right. The island loomed above her like a giant cliff of porous and pitted stone, with the wooden dock projecting out from it. When she angled her sail to catch the wind, the Devious rose, but she was so busy with her lines and the tiller and wing flap pedals that the next time she looked, the island was far away. It was like a giant slab of stone hanging in the sky, and the tiny figures waving from the dock were indistinct.
Tak sat on the dormitory roof with his cloak wrapped tightly around his shoulders, cradling a lantern. The sun was just coming up, tinging the gray sky with morning green. He should have been in bed with the other cadets. In a matter of minutes, the sergeant would come in and wake them. If the sergeant discovered he wasn’t in bed but outside on the roof, it would mean more demerits and pot scrubbing.
He scanned the sky in the direction of the wizard’s island. It floated a quarter-mile or so off Selemont, high in the sky, already bright with reflected sun. But Tak’s sailspinner ears heard Brieze approach before he saw her. He caught the fluttering rustle of a spider-silk sail, the squeak of a rope being pulled through a cleat, and his eyes darted toward the sound. Heavens! To see Brieze’s ship in the sky—or more accurately, to not quite see it—was startling. He saw no hull, no keel, no masts or sail—only vague smudgy glints and shimmers where these things should be. The only thing his eyes detected clearly was the tracery of the ship’s rigging against the green morning sky. And the wink of sun reflecting off a metal bracket here and there.
Finally, he caught sight of Brieze herself. Or half of her at least. The top half of her body visible as she sat in the stern with her hand on the tiller. She leaned out over the gunwale and waved with her other hand. Tak leapt to his feet and swung the lantern back and forth. He wished he could leap into the sky! He had to stifle the shout welling up in his throat. It would have wakened the entire dormitory. Possibly the entire academy.
She blew him a kiss.
He blew one back.
And then she was gone. She steered her ship eastward, into the rising sun, and disappeared. A devious girl in an invisible ship, heading into the unknown.
“Watch out Eastern Kingdoms,” Tak sighed. “You have no idea what’s coming for you.”
Sitting in the stern of the Devious with a hand on the tiller, Brieze sucked on one of
the candies her mother had given her, a cinnamon-flavored one, and savored her solitude.
The Highspire Mountains had disappeared below the horizon behind her. There was nothing below her but a sea of silvery-gray clouds, stretching endlessly in every direction. There was nothing above her but sky, and no sign of human beings anywhere—not a glint of sail or wisp of smoke. There was no sound of them, either. None of the unnecessary shouting and constant racket that prevailed on the wizard’s island. Brieze sighed contentedly. She was completely, utterly alone! No possibility of anyone watching her, judging her, interrupting her. She felt lighter, freer, than she’d felt in a long time. She breathed the chill air of the Eastern Emptiness deep into her lungs, and it felt invigorating.
She checked her compass and nudged her tiller so the bow of the Devious pointed due east.
FIVE
She could never say exactly when it started, but about one month into her voyage, Brieze started talking to herself.
It began with her reminding herself to do things. “It sounded like sleet last night,” she said to herself one morning. “You should check the lines for ice.” Or, later, “We’re listing slightly to port. Maybe you should shift some food stores to the starboard compartments.” It seemed harmless enough at first, just a way to fill the silence. But it bothered her because she’d never talked to herself before, and because she had no control over it. She’d resolve to stop, and she’d pop one of her mother’s candies into her mouth to keep it busy. She’d suck the candy furiously and roll it around on her tongue. But minutes later the candy was gone, without her even remembering what flavor it had been, and she was doing it again.