by Andrew Post
Clyde lifted Commencement, which he was carrying around in his hand since the strap was keeping Bandit Boy’s wound staunched. He smiled reassuringly. “We’ll
be fine.”
Bandit Boy laughed. “Gonna need more than a fancy pokey stick! Some nasty critters out here—an’ we’re like to run into some seein’ how yer wantin’ to start out so close to sunsdown. Ever seen a rocky crawler before?”
“No.” But Clyde could imagine.
“Then you ain’t never seen a pissed-off one neither. I have. Lucky to be standin’ here.”
“I’ll keep an eye out. You just lead us to the nearest town.”
“Hopefully,” Rohm put in, “he’ll do a better job than the driver we had.”
Clyde flicked the lump in his pocket.
“Hey, ow.”
Bandit Boy laughed. “I think I like him.”
“And I’m sure he likes you too.” And before Rohm could voice his disagreement, he said, “So when you’re ready, lead on. We’ll follow.”
“Awright,” Bandit Boy said with no shortage of uncertainty, “off we go.” He poked the harpoon tip into the sand a step ahead, shuffled up to it, then did it again.
Clyde marveled that he didn’t even need to consult
a compass.
“But if we get ourselves eht, caint say I dinnit warn
ya none.”
CHAPTER 6
Slight Turbulence
When her section was called, Nevele stuffed the radio back into her bag, a sourness polluting her. She still hadn’t gotten in contact with Clyde. And once on the frigate, there’d be no way to try again—using radios was a serious no-no. She’d have to wait until she was back home in Geyser. She hoped Clyde was just busy or springtime storms had caused interference.
Nevele gave her ticket to be punched by the uniformed Adeshkan guardsman, stepped into the glass tank, and accepted the avalanche of frisk mice poured over her again. As before, it made her miss Rohm. The mice, finding nothing suspicious upon her person, filed into a slot in the floor and the doors opened. From there, Nevele took the elevator down, crossed the walkway to the frigate—the enormous ex-military ship, a horizontal skyscraper with wings—bobbing in the green water of the great Déashune.
Walking up the center aisle, Nevele ignored the scrutinizing first-class passengers the best she could. Before the couple seated next to her could ask why she looked the way she did, Nevele pulled up her hood and feigned sleep.
Ten minutes later, the frigate hammered down the Déashune, using it as a runway, and took wing. After it’d safely hoisted its bulk skyward, a palpable fear lifted from the thousands of passengers around her.
Outside her triangular window, Gleese dropped beneath them. Then, once they were at cruising altitude, the groves looked more like clumps of moss and the geography blended bit by bit into the lush red of the Lakebed’s borderlands.
She’d always liked traveling. Especially back when she’d joined her parents, owners of the Mallencroix Delivery Company, on their many interplanetary jaunts. Except when her brother insisted he come too. But this, now, not knowing where Clyde was or if he was okay, was worse than any of Vidurkis’s harassments. And worse than even that was knowing what awaited Geyser in three days.
Still not interested in a chat with the couple next to her—
who, she’d inferred through their prattle, were on their honeymoon, bless ’em—Nevele slipped on her headphones.
The Skullduggerists. Punk act out of Adeshka. Probably not commonly considered serene with the all-female group forsaking harmony in favor of volume, but it held an almost magically soothing effect on Nevele. “Glitter + Glue” in particular.
I wanna be with you
Bad as glitter wants on glue
(Shik, shik, shik)
Shake me some
Love me some
An’ say you’re through?
Glue-boy glue
An’ glitter-girl blue
Shook over you
(Shik, shik, shik)
Stuck on you
Not exactly highbrow, no, but Nevele could finally take a deep breath without it catching in her throat. She set the song to repeat and sank comfortably into her seat.
With a smile that seemed die-cast, the frigate’s flight attendant rolled a tiny cart up the aisle, dispensing drinks and bags of crisps. Her hair was perfect, in these two swoops that nestled twin points at the corners of her mouth. Adeshka fashion could be so odd at times. “Glitter + Glue” began again.
But for all the irritation going on around her—Mr. and Mrs. Normalid next to her and the flight attendant’s superfake ways—Nevele couldn’t help but smile when thinking about Clyde, the happier times. Before they’d taken on this whole impede-the-Odium thing—during Geyser’s restoration, when hope was not plentiful but mandatory.
It’d been when he’d asked her to marry him.
She remembered every detail, helped by the Skullduggerists since she’d been listening to them then, too. She’d been at her shop, in the back patching up something for Miss Selby, when the string of bells on the front door chimed.
Clyde found her at her worktable and, without hesitation, dropped to one knee. Through happy tears, she accepted emphatically. Later that night they set a date and planned to have the wedding at the base of the geyser in the town square.
But not long after, rumors rammed into Geyser. With them, Nevele’s fluorescent-pink wedding-day goggles started getting tugged off. It didn’t help how each night Clyde began returning to their home on Wilkshire Lane from the palace with worry clouding his face. Refusing to talk it over with her, saying she should concentrate on wedding plans with Miss Selby, he’d head upstairs to the study. Never needing to sleep, he’d spend every minute with his worries. Eventually she demanded to know, sick of essentially living alone in a big, empty house, the only evidence she had a fiancé at all being hollow thumps of ceaseless pacing above.
Oh, how they’d fought.
But in the end, they decided to strike out separately. Not with a nod and a handshake all peaceful and amicable, either. Neither one wanted the other in danger, but the threat of losing the city was so much greater. They lingered during that farewell kiss, both afraid it could be their last.
Heart pounding, Nevele raised the volume on her headphones, frantic to gather the inexplicable peace it gave her, trying to soak in as much of it as possible.
Three days. They had only three days to stop the Odium. She imagined Pitka Gorett, wherever he’d denned himself, fingers steepled, cackling with his plan close to fruition.
Worse, she realized with a start, she was alone, as far as she knew, in knowing their plan. The contents of her head were very valuable.
Faintly: “Miss?”
Nevele drew back her hood.
The flight attendant, who seemed to try not to recoil, quickly turned her smile up from bright to nuclear. “Would you care for some crisped ardimires?”
“No, thank you.”
“Are you sure? They’re complimentary.”
The couple beside her tore into theirs. Apparently they’d been too busy with other activities during their honeymoon to remember to feed themselves. Jealousy ground at Nevele, making her jaw ache.
“I’m fine,” she said and tugged her hood back up.
After a few minutes of manically circling thoughts, a neck-jamming turbulence hit. Nevele shot up in her seat, even though no one else reacted. I’m so jumpy.
“Miss?”
“No refreshments, thank you, still fine.”
“Please come with me.”
In the aisle a thin, dark-haired man stared down at her. Not in a flight attendant’s or even a pilot’s uniform but a plain black suit tailored for a much beefier frame than his.
“Something wrong?” She glanced around. A few people in adjoining aisles—and Mr. and Mrs. Normaloid—all stared at the man and Nevele.
“We need to speak,” he said, voice dull. “So if you’d plea
se . . .” He indicated aft with a sidelong nod and stepped aside so she could get out of her seat. She watched his hand return to his pocket and move something around.
Nevele, unbuckling, considered lashing him with her threads. She had keen aim but not good enough to be certain she’d avoid catching someone else by accident.
She stepped into the aisle, mind racing, the man close behind. They passed into the cramped section where flight attendants prepared meals and reloaded refreshment carts.
The man pointed left at a narrow stairwell. “Up.”
When she didn’t heed him, he shifted a gun-shaped thing in his pocket. “Go.”
Reluctantly, she clunked up the stairs. How the blazes am I going to get out of this one? We’re on a bloody frigate. Where can I even run?
Another patch of turbulence rocked them, making Nevele fleetingly think they’d scraped a mountaintop. Snagging the handrail, she turned herself on the step to look back at him, considering again, threads ready.
“You one of them?” she said, holding her ground on the step above him. “Gave you a shave and a new suit so you wouldn’t look so piratey?”
He produced the gun from his pocket. “Go.”
She groaned, “Fine,” and continued up.
The dining room. Every one of the booths, set upon the luxuriant blue carpet, was empty.
Another quake hit. A few lights flickered, the chandeliers’ crystals breaking into a discordant song. Bottles secured in brass shelves behind the bar rattled in time with the electric braziers’ nauseating sways. Nevele grabbed onto the edge of the lacquered bar to keep from tumbling over. Something cold poked her lower back.
“Over there.”
Taking a seat, Nevele kept her face set, not wanting to give him even the smallest win of seeing her afraid. All the while, her heart threw itself against her rib cage again and again.
Sitting across from him, she finally got a good look. His skin was uniformly the same shade, as if he’d slathered himself in that cakey mud-in-a-tube stuff used to patch fenders. His eyes—blinking often, as if they burned—seemed off somehow. Glassy. Whites too white.
With a glance, she took stock of the empty dining room. There was nothing that could be harmed if she used her threads. But at the same time, he had a gun. She’d need to catch him off guard. Tough, since he never seemed to look anywhere but at her.
“So we’re here,” she said. “What do you wish to discuss?”
“You spoke to a man by the name of Coog McPhearson earlier today. What did he tell you?”
“Who are you?”
“You spoke to a man earlier today—”
“I heard you the first time.”
“Then tell me what he said.”
“I think, at this particular juncture, I’m going to respectfully decline. Instead I’ll suggest you take that gun of yours, bend over, and—”
“If you don’t accommodate, I will give a signal to my associate waiting in the holds, who will trigger an explosive. It will rupture the fuel cells, down the frigate, and kill everyone on board.”
Her spine became ice.
“I had no plans to be on this flight today,” he said. “I had plans for it, unquestionably, but none that involved me being a passenger. But as it’s said, best laid plans.” He smiled thinly. “So if you want to leave with me and my associate, I’d recommend speaking up.” His weird eyes peeked down at his watch. “We’ve only a while.”
“Okay, okay, fine. Coog said . . . he said that I’d be approached by a man to whom I should immediately recommend firing his tailor. I mean, look at that thing you got on. Could fit three of you in there.”
Recoiling an arm, movements graceful and measured, he tucked a hand into his baggy suit coat. He set down a walkie-talkie between them. “Thin ice.”
A thread lacing Nevele’s right arm begged to be freed. She forbade it. “What information could be so valuable? None of these people have anything to do with this. Besides, if you blow up the frigate, you’ll die too.”
“Another will follow through.”
“Follow through with what? Getting information out of me? Fat lot that’ll get you. I don’t think I’m likely to be a talkative corpse.”
“You are betrothed to the Sequestered Son, are you not?”
“This is about Clyde?” Things latched into place. She had seen this man before, but something was different. It’d been in Geyser. Of that much she could be certain, but in what capacity and when?
His left hand knotted into a fist. When he opened it, she noticed that in the creases between his fingers, something white had been smudged in. Like he’d stuffed his hand inside a jar of flour, wiping it off, but some had remained in the valleys of his skin’s texture.
No. It was the opposite. The white wasn’t on him; that was him.
“You’re Raziel Pyne.”
His cheek cratered over a clenching jaw. “Tell me what the pirate told you.”
“Raziel, why are you doing this?” All sassiness was gone now, bewilderment replacing it. “He’s been looking for you. He wants you and Tym and Moira to come back to Geyser. He wants to meet you.”
“He’s already met me,” he said, volume rising. “He just doesn’t remember because Father made him tell me that he—” He swallowed. “Doesn’t matter. Any love I ever had for him in return is just as gone. Same for Father.”
“Maybe . . . if we just talked about this . . .”
“I thought he was dead. For years,” Raziel shouted. “Father told us he was dead before he even announced it publicly, to the world, lying to everyone. And . . . I thought then that I had to become the man suitable for the job, prepared for the Commencement. And that’s precisely what I was doing when Pitka Gorett usurped Father. At the academy, studying my eyes out, dealing with all the comments that I never have to sleep or eat and that gave me an unfair advantage . . .” He reduced the rest of the statement to a snarl.
“None of that is Clyde’s fault. Nor is anyone on this frigate to blame. You kill all these people, and I don’t need to tell you . . . Clyde’s a forgiving man, but something like that?”
“I don’t want his forgiveness,” Raziel spoke to the table’s grain. “I don’t want a thing from him except his death. And I know if any of Father’s stubbornness is in him, he won’t be willing to give up the throne even though it’s mine. He got sent away. He forfeits. And now it’s up to me to save the city he’s throwing away. He’s ruining what I’ve worked so hard to become.”
“So you have a degree you can’t use anymore and you think that’s Clyde’s fault? Reason enough to kill him?”
“He should’ve just stayed away. He should’ve remained buried wherever Father put him, hiding like the pitiful nothing he always was. What sort of weaver like him could ever be of consequence?”
Raziel lifted his gaze, and Nevele saw one of his eyes
. . . drift, as if it’d suddenly become lazy. At the edge of its white, she could see blackness behind it. Just like Clyde’s. He blinked, and the lens popped back where it belonged.
“He helps people feel better,” Nevele said. “That’s huge, if you ask me.”
“Oh? But can he do this?”
She had to draw a breath—something sharp was inside her, like a long knife with a jointed blade that twisted and swam as it cut, swishing in a serpentine way.
“He scrubs black motes of people’s guilt away,” Raziel went on, his voice muted by Nevele’s speeding pulse. “Hardly fabrick. His is a stillborn gift.”
Nevele’s vision clouded. Her face felt full, hot. She fell from her seat, squirming on the floor, overwhelmed by
the pain.
“I, as you are now discovering, received a great generosity from the stone.” Raziel knelt beside her. “One befitting a king.”
Her threads reached and lashed, aimless, sporadic.
Raziel pulled at a loose strand. “Would you unravel like a sweater? Every bit of pain you’ve ever inflicted on anyone.” He looped her t
hreads around his fingers as they squeezed him harmlessly in uncontrollable, soft pulses. “Physical, emotional, psychological. Given back. And by your rather dramatic response, it seems you haven’t exactly been kind to your fellow man.”
“Stop,” Nevele managed. “Please.”
“I don’t know what you can do with these strings of yours, but it’d be wise to not try and harm me. Will you be good?”
“Yes. Just . . . please. Please.”
“All right, then.” The cutting, white-hot agony withdrew.
Nevele, gasping, sat up and pawed her chest. She glared at him as her threads wound themselves back into her, lacing the skin panels. “There’s no way,” she croaked, “you’re a Pyne.”
“How can you be so sure? You’ve only the one for an example, and he’s not much to write home about.”
“I knew your dad. He was—”
“A fool who thought Gleese could be changed if he only lived by example, his benevolence becoming contagious. But you saw, if you really did know him, that eventually he succumbed, even finally trading in that stupid sword for a weapon suitable for the times.”
Nevele remembered now. A party at the palace, back when she was newly the Royal Stitcher. It’d been a lavish affair celebrating some dignitary’s birthday. Raziel, Tym, and Moira were in attendance, gloomily occupying the back corner of the reception hall, watching the others have fun. She never suspected their pale faces as anything abnormal; it’d been a masquerade ball, and below domino masks decorated with feathers and gems, she took the unmoving lips as bone-white unpainted porcelain. Not flesh.
Leaving Nevele on the floor, Raziel sauntered to the bar, pulled out a stool, and gingerly had a seat. Unmasking—if only in word—seemed to loosen him greatly. With the gun, he motioned a Please continue roll of the wrist. “What’d Coog say, then?”
“What’s it matter to you?” She rubbed her chest, the ache lingering. “If they blow up Geyser, wouldn’t you win?”
“I can’t be a king without a kingdom, idiot.”
Nevele returned to her chair, dropping into it. “Just so you know, I’m through talking to you.”