The Sky Weaver

by Kristen Ciccarelli

  “Once we’re up on deck, we’ll need to use the element of surprise to our advantage. The point isn’t to fight them. The point is to lessen their numbers as quickly as possible. As soon as your feet hit that deck, don’t think. Just do whatever you can to get them over the side of the ship and into the sea.”

  There was a mumble of assent.

  “Don’t be afraid of them,” said the man who’d broken the bottles, now standing at Safire’s side in the dark. His name, she’d learned, was Atlas. “Damaged goods fetch less of a price—or no price at all. And that’s what we are to them: goods. They’ll do everything they can not to damage us.”

  Surprised by this, Safire looked to Atlas, but could make out nothing but the rough shape of him. “I hadn’t thought of that,” she said.

  “I wasn’t so different from them once,” he said. “I know how they think.”

  Now for their most pressing problem: getting out of this hold.

  The ship’s crew had pulled up the ladder leading down into the hatch, and the space between it and the floor was now too high for a single person to reach.

  To solve this problem, they rolled barrels full of salt fish and set now-empty boxes of spirits below, creating makeshift steps up to the hatch. Safire selected five others to go with her as the first line of defense, while the next five would ensure everyone escaped from the hold.

  Once everyone was on deck, they would do whatever was necessary to thin the crew and take the ship.

  When they were all in position, Safire pressed both her palms to the door of the hatch. She was just about to push, when someone screamed from above, “Monster!”

  Safire froze.

  “Sea monster!”

  A shout of alarm rose up, echoing across the deck over Safire’s head. The thud of running boots filled her ears.

  “A sea monster will sink us,” came a voice near Safire.

  Panicked murmurs filled the room around her.

  “We’ll be drowned in here,” said someone else.

  “Hush!” Safire ordered. “Stay calm.”

  But it was too late. The unity of their common purpose broke. So Safire calmed herself, ignoring the fear bleeding through the captives around her, and listened.

  She felt the ship rock, its wooden frame creaking beneath a massive weight, and the little bit of lamplight trickling into this room disappeared. As if a great shadow blocked it out.

  She heard the sound of bodies being hurled through the air. Of men and women screaming as they were sent overboard and into the sea.

  And then, drowning it all out, came a ferocious roar.

  The sound sent chills through everyone in the hold—everyone except for Safire. She knew that sound. It made hope spark within her.

  “It’s not a sea monster,” she realized. “It’s a dragon.”

  This did nothing to calm the panic.

  Suddenly, the hatch clicked from the other side. The room hushed as it swung open and the rain gushed in. With it came the light from a lantern.

  “Found you.”

  Safire looked up into her cousin’s scarred face. Asha’s dark hair was a damp, windblown mess and her eyes were fierce as they scanned Safire first, then the crowd of captives below her. Behind Asha, one big yellow eye came into view as Kozu looked down into the hatch, fixing on the people huddled there. Several of them stepped back. The girl with the broom stood staring though, awed by the sight of the First Dragon, his scales slick with rain.

  “It’s all right,” said Safire. “They’re here to help.”

  Beyond Kozu, the sky was dark with storm clouds as Spark flew in lazy loops around the ship’s ocher sails.

  Asha grabbed Safire’s arm and pulled her onto the deck, then wrapped her in a tight hug. Her clothes were soaked through.

  “How did you find me?” Safire whispered into her shoulder.

  Asha let go, then turned toward the young man at the helm. Torwin gripped the wheel looking like he had no idea what he was doing.

  Beside him gleamed a white dragon with a broken horn.

  “It was Sorrow,” Asha explained. “Torwin was on his way to Firgaard when Sorrow suddenly turned back. There was nothing Torwin could do to sway him. Sorrow found us in the air and started flying in circles, clicking furiously at Kozu and Spark. When he headed out to sea, they followed him. He led us straight to you.”

  Safire frowned, glancing up into Sorrow’s black eyes, which were now peering curiously at the captives huddled in the shadows.

  “You’re linked,” said Asha. “It’s the only way he could have known where you were.”

  “But wouldn’t I feel it?” Safire watched the white dragon hop down from the upper deck and cautiously make his way to where the captives were climbing out of the hatch.

  “He might not bond like other dragons,” said Asha, watching, too. “Maybe you’ll never sense it. Or maybe it’s the kind of link that grows stronger over time.” Suddenly, she turned away from Sorrow. “I take it things didn’t go well at the citadel. Where’s Roa?”

  “Leandra has her.”

  Safire’s conversation with the empress came flooding back. She thought of the hood coming down. Of Leandra’s last words.

  I’ll watch the daughter of my enemy die a slow and agonizing death.

  “She has Eris, too. She’s going to kill her, Asha. I need to find her. She said she was taking her somewhere called the immortal scarps?”

  Asha’s gaze snapped to Safire’s face. “The immortal scarps . . . According to the stories, the Shadow God turned Skye into Skyweaver at the bottom of the immortal scarps. They’re the highest point in the Star Isles. Atop the red-clay cliffs on the northern side of Axis Isle. But I doubt a ship will get to them in time.” She looked up at Kozu’s massive black form coiled on the deck. “A dragon, on the other hand . . .”

  “Asha!” Torwin called through the wind and rain. “Trouble’s headed our way.”

  They all turned to find Torwin frowning into the distance.

  A boom of thunder made them all flinch. Safire joined Torwin as lightning flickered across the sky, illuminating the silhouette of another ship sailing rapidly toward them. When lightning flashed again, Safire saw a man at its helm. The lantern in his hand illuminated a scar over his right eye.

  “Jemsin,” Safire scowled.

  As if hearing his name, the pirate captain looked directly at her. Their eyes met across the water.

  “We can assist,” said a voice at her side. Safire looked to find Atlas, the burly man who’d broken bottles of spirits and helped her roll barrels of salt fish in the hold. His clothes were dripping now, and his face was slick with rain. At his side stood a handful of other prisoners. Nodding to the helm, he said, “I’ve sailed ships almost as big as this.”

  Safire looked from them back out to sea. There was something familiar about the cliffs in the distance. If she squinted and waited for the lightning, she could see the familiar shapes bobbing in the water.

  Sea spirits.

  “The ship wrecking grounds,” she murmured, remembering Eris’s name for them. Remembering the advice Kor didn’t take.

  “See there?” said Safire, pointing to the dark silhouettes in the waves. “There are rocks just beneath the surface. They’ll put a hole in your hull and you’ll be easy prey for sea spirits.” She looked back to the masts of Jemsin’s ship, getting closer by the heartbeat. “If you can get around to the other side of them, you might be able to lure those pirates straight into the wrecking grounds.”

  When she turned back, the wheel had already been taken from Torwin, who was watching Asha mount Kozu.

  Sorrow stared at Safire across the rain-slick deck, wings spread, ready to fly. Safire crossed to him in five easy strides, then mounted up.

  A heartbeat later, she nodded to Asha.

  Together, their dragons leaped into the storm.

  Forty-Six

  The soldier jerked Eris to a hard stop. Looking back over her shoulder, she found the empre
ss staring up at the only occupied cage above them.

  “Lower her down.”

  One of the Lumina unhooked the chain of Skye’s cage, then slowly lowered it. The chain creaked and groaned until the bottom of the cage hit the platform with a clang.

  “I should force you to watch.” The empress looked Skye up and down, taking in her filthy dress and knotted hair. As if Eris’s mother was beneath her. “I should show you the consequence of your crime firsthand.”

  Skye stared back from behind the bars. For someone who’d been imprisoned eighteen long years, who’d had her very hands taken by the enemy before her, there was no trace of hatred or contempt in her eyes. Only pity.

  She said not a word to the empress. Instead, Skye turned her face to Eris.

  “Remember who you are,” she said, her green eyes intense. “My daughter. Day’s hope. Your father’s heir—an heir of shadows and stars.”

  The empress growled an order. In an instant, they were forcing Eris out of the room, away from Skye. She looked back just as the door slammed shut, separating her from her mother.

  As they marched her through the citadel and out into the daylight, Eris thought of everything her mother said. About the Shadow God’s soul, hidden in a knife, and how it needed to be returned, to free him of his prison. But Eris didn’t have the knife. And even if she did, the stardust steel cuffs on her wrists prevented her from going across and delivering it to him.

  There was nothing she could do.

  They put Eris on horseback and marched her through the streets of Axis. At the sight of the newly captured Death Dancer, more and more people came to look, curious about this dangerous fugitive who’d eluded their empress for so long. The manacles around Eris’s wrists were linked to chains held by four Lumina soldiers, two before and behind her, to keep her from running.

  “Where are you taking me?” she asked the one closest when they passed through the final checkpoint at the edge of Axis’s border, leaving the city—and its citizens—behind.

  The soldier didn’t answer, just pointed up the dirt road before them. Eris’s gaze followed it as it rose, higher and higher, up to the scarps.

  Eris knew what was at the top of those scarps and what happened to the criminals they took there.

  She knew what they were going to do.

  When the city of Axis lay far behind them, it started to rain. Not long after that, a storm rolled in, darkening the sky.

  As they reached the highest point, where the steady incline of gray rock leveled out into wet meadow, Eris saw the sea. As she stood facing that vast expanse of water, Eris realized just how alone she was. Her mother was locked in a cage. Her father—the god of shadows—was imprisoned in a place she couldn’t get to. Safire was long gone—she hoped—and far away from here.

  There was just Eris now.

  But that was nothing new. There had always been just Eris. It was what she was best at: being alone.

  Now, though, as the ground leveled out, as they marched her through the meadow and toward the cliffs, Eris found herself wondering how things might have been different. What would her life be like if the scrin had never burned? If she’d never had to run?

  Who would she be?

  Who did she want to be?

  Thunder shook the earth as they marched her across the meadow, closer to the cliff edge. While lightning slithered across the sky, Eris tried to estimate the distance from the top of the scarps to the water below. Unlike the chalky white cliffs near the scrin, these were red clay and considerably higher. No jagged-tooth rocks lay below. Or if they did, they were hidden beneath the sea.

  If there weren’t any rocks below those crashing waves, it might be possible to survive a fall from this height. The likelihood was certainly higher than what the empress had in store for her.

  But Eris didn’t have time to contemplate the idea. The soldiers swung her around, so her back faced the sea, and forced her two hands onto a long stone slab, slick with rain. In the light of their spluttering torches, she saw that the ground beneath the slab was dirt, as if nothing had grown there for years. And straight in front of Eris, some kind of steel bar had been curved and fitted into the slab, though for what purpose, she couldn’t say.

  Leandra stood opposite Eris, a wicked-looking sword sheathed across her back. More soldiers stood behind their empress—some of them watching Eris, the others watching the perimeter.

  The thunder bellowed and the lightning flickered. As the rain lashed down, Eris thought about that drop from the cliffs to the waves.

  Possible, thought Eris. But not probable.

  A Lumina soldier stood across from her, holding the chain fastened to her stardust steel cuffs, keeping her hands squarely on the stone slab. Another Lumina stood behind her, keeping himself between her and the cliffs.

  Leandra drew the Severer from its sheath at her back. Eris had never seen it before, but she knew the stories. A stardust steel blade so sharp and lethal, it could cleave through bone in one fell swoop.

  The empress’s hair dripped with rain, her gray jacket clinging to her frame. And as she stepped up to the slab of rock, Eris knew what came next.

  They couldn’t afford to keep her alive. She was the only one who could set the Shadow God free. The only one who could save the Star Isles from the liar on its throne.

  It was why they’d brought no medic. Nothing to cauterize a wound.

  They were going to sever her hands and leave her to die.

  Eris couldn’t let that happen. Contemplating that thousand-foot drop at her back, she calculated what it would take to get there. Before the Severer came down, if she could create some sort of distraction, she might be able to pull her chain free, then fling herself off that cliff and pray she survived.

  As the empress readied herself, Eris’s eyes met the soldier before her—the one who held the chains of her manacles. When his mouth stretched into a wicked grin, it was the motivation she needed. She launched herself over the altar—straight into him. He grunted as her small body knocked the air out of his lungs. In his shock, he released her chains. Recovering her balance, Eris looked to the cliff and the sea and the sky beyond it.

  Freedom.

  She flew for it. Ready to jump. Ready to fall. Ready to be dashed upon the rocks if it came to that—because at least it would be a death on her terms, not the empress’s.

  Someone grabbed the back of her shirt before she reached the edge. The collar choked her hard, halting her momentum. They swung her back and threw her violently down, holding her cheek against the cold altar stone with their weight pressing down. Crushing her.

  “Hold her still,” Eris heard the empress say as she gasped for air. “We’ll do this one at a time. . . .”

  At the empress’s icy touch her left manacle fell open. For one delusional moment, she thought the empress had changed her mind. Was setting her free.

  But when the pressure on her back disappeared and Eris tried to move, to rise, to run again, she found she couldn’t. The manacle that had enclosed her left wrist a moment ago was now locked around the curved bar fitted into the altar. Keeping her prisoner. Preventing her from running.

  No, no, no . . .

  Panicked, Eris tugged and twisted and strained against it, her eyes filling with tears as she realized there was no escape.

  Forty-Seven

  The storm worsened.

  As Safire and Asha flew through the rain, the clouds darkened to black. Soon the thunder was over them and lightning seemed to strike wherever they’d just been. Any moment now, it would strike Sorrow and Kozu, too.

  “We’re not going to make it!” Asha shouted above the rain. “The dragons can’t fly up there without risking all of us.”

  Safire kept her gaze fixed on the smooth red cliffs in the distance. The rain stung Safire’s face and hands. She was losing feeling in her fingers.

  “Get me as close as you can,” she whispered, clicking to Sorrow, who propelled her forward through the storm.

&nbs
p; Kozu followed close behind.

  As the cliffs drew nearer, Sorrow started upward, as if making a dash for the summit, when a flash of light and heat temporarily blinded Safire. She cried out at the same time Kozu roared, and then they were half falling, half banking away from the lightning strike.

  Safire wrapped her arms hard around Sorrow’s neck, closing her eyes as she clung on.

  Suddenly, she was thrown forward. There was a crash of showering rocks and red sand as Sorrow tried to land on a precipice that was proving to be too fragile to hold him. Kozu landed farther up, on even less stable ground.

  In a moment, they’d have to dive back toward the sea. But Safire could see the top of the cliffs from here, shrouded in mist. She knew the dragons wouldn’t get her any closer than this.

  Letting go of Sorrow, she swung her legs over and slid down the dragon’s scaly hide.

  “Saf!” Asha cried out.

  Her feet hit the ground, which trembled and shook beneath her as more rock slid out from under her.

  “Find somewhere safer to land!” Safire called back, ducking beneath Sorrow’s flapping wings and carefully beginning to scale this crumbling precipice, heading for higher and more solid ground. “I’m going up there!”

  She contemplated the gap between this quickly dissolving outcropping and the large solid-looking rock beyond it. As more stones fell to the water below, she didn’t look down. Just threw all her weight into a jump.

  Her feet landed firmly. Turning, she saw Sorrow leaping into the rain, while Kozu remained behind, massive wings beating.

  “You need a weapon!” Asha called into the rain, unbuckling something at her belt. “Take this!”

  The silver sheath of the Skyweaver’s knife winked as Asha tossed it through the air. Safire caught the cold, eerie blade in both hands, then secured it to her belt. When she looked back, Asha glanced over her shoulder as Kozu dived into the mist below.