by Jeff Hook
Then again, the boarders would have already had their way with the ship for several days. The harder she pushed her super, the longer she slept afterward… and she had pushed hard, keeping the enemy ship on its side and helpless while separating out the two that Jerry had identified as having pursuit powers. The gamble had been that sending those two away would slow down their pursuers enough that escape was possible.
She staggered to her feet, anxious to see if her crew was okay and excited to regain her strength with food and drink. She tested her power, a slight breeze, and found that it only strained a little. Using her power would get easier and she’d be able to command stronger winds as the hangover from using her super wore off.
However, the puff of wind had the effect she had intended. Two of her crew members burst into her cabin, faces alight.
“She lives!” yelled Jerry. The boy was fifteen now and had been with her six years: six years of constant running and worry, which he met with the enthusiasm that only a teenage boy could muster. He got under one shoulder, supporting her by acting as a human crutch.
Sally ran under her other shoulder. She was fourteen and had been with Evyleen for three years. The constant running and worry got to her more than it did the boy, but it was an improvement over her former life, so Sally chose to stay.
“Of course I live,” said Evyleen. “I’m just glad you guys were able to row away from the danger.”
“We get so worried every time,” said Sally. “Your power knocks you out for so long, and Glyffin… well, he’s okay for a dog, but he thinks we’re all as strong as him.”
“Baltese,” corrected Evyleen. “He wants to be called Baltese, and we’re not going to let history or prejudice make us mistreat our first mate.”
Sally blushed. Her problems had started when Baltese pirates from the far north killed her father, so it wasn’t just stories that made her hate, but it was still important to treat your friends the right way.
They stepped onto the deck and Evyleen breathed deeply, enjoying the salt air and the feel of sun on her skin. This far north it was hard for a Mezazi like her to get enough sun; the native peoples up here had developed faded, sand-pink skin to compensate, but Evyleen had to spend all day above decks and hope it was enough.
Glyffin heard the door open and snapped to attention. Baltese came in a wide variety of shapes and sizes; Glyffin was a Husky mix, large with grey-flecked white fur. He was only seventeen, but he already stood six feet three inches and had a frame that implied he ate a moose every week. His crystal contraptions, which included a Pyromite blaster and several other devices forbidden to the Baltese, hung on his belt where a normal person would put swords. His two giant swords were instead stored on his back.
Even someone without prejudices (if such a person existed) might be terrified.
“I am enthused to see that you’ve recovered,” he stated with military precision. “I have taken care of the ship as well as I could. Are you feeling well enough to resume command?”
“Why’s he always talk so formal when he’s playing captain?” Jerry whispered across Evyleen to Sally.
Sally shrugged, bumping Evyleen’s left shoulder up and unbalancing them both for a moment.
“As long as it doesn’t require moving quickly on my own, yes,” said Evyleen.
“Excellent,” replied Glyffin. “Command is yours again. May I speak freely, captain?”
“Always.”
“You shouldn’t be so reckless with your super. We rowed hard for several days, but our crew is spoiled by your power. If there had been a second ship coming up behind the first… you know they’re going to try it one of these days.”
“Jerry’s power would be able to identify them,” she countered, “just as he identified how this last ship was keeping up with us.”
“But what if they figure out his power’s weakness? What if they send a second ship full of Baltese rowers and low-powered sailors that he can’t detect?”
As sad as it made her to think about it, she knew he was right. This last attempt to capture her had been the most organized yet, and the Mezazi Empire wouldn’t rest until they had her in their clutches, tied to the mast, whipped and tortured until she did exactly what they wanted: making wind that sped the navy to whatever land her country’s twisted rulers wanted to conquer next.
“I have a plan,” she said. “Give me a moment.”
She tried to shrug off her helpers, but they insisted on staying with her.
“You just got up from your super and you want to get rid of us already?” asked Sally, only half-joking.
“We can’t risk you falling,” added Jerry.
So together they went to search for her two Mezazi rescues.
She found Tony in the kitchen, already prepping the night’s meal in one big pot, a potato and cabbage stew that smelled far better than its ingredients would imply. They really should stop at a port soon to stock up on meat and fresh goods.
“You’re up,” said Tony matter-of-factly. “I bet you’re hungry.”
He stretched out his hand and used his power to make a metal bowl come flying toward him. As he caught it he pulled his hand back to cushion the impact. Once the bowl was still he scooped stew into it out of the pot, then walked over to Evyleen to hand her the dish.
His power only worked on metal, and only pulled… but it was still surprisingly effective as a combat power. A small burst of it and an armored opponent would be off balance, or they might drop their metal sword. Of course, pull too hard and Tony would be hit by whatever object his power had affected. Thankfully, he’d only messed up with dull objects so far.
“We’re going to sail out of the Empire,” she told him, lowering her voice to try and soften the blow. “I know you’ve spent your life—”
He thrust the bowl of soup at her. “Eat.”
Jerry took it for her, letting her concentrate on the conversation. “If you want to jump off at the next port, I unders—”
“Listen. We may have Mezazi skin, but they stopped being our people a long time ago.” He walked back to his pot of stew and began stirring. “Will there be enough targets outside the empire?”
“Pickings will be slimmer, but there are unscrupulous traders everywhere.” She wanted to say that it was just the government, not the people themselves, but they’d had that argument many times already. She didn’t understand how he could cut himself off so completely, but for now it was convenient.
With that taken care of, she gulped down the stew — she really was hungry — then let Jerry find a good place to put the bowl. Now for the harder conversation.
They found Esilray hauling an explosive round to the upper deck.
“Everything alright?”
“Routine check,” he said. He stepped into the sunlight and put the round down, squatting so he could inspect every inch of it. “Just because the enemy got blown away this time doesn’t mean we won’t need these eventually.”
This conversation was going to be harder. Tony just wanted to be left alone, but Esilray… it was a wonder he’d agreed to join up in the first place, considering he was only one of three black Mezazi on the ship. His whole thing was not wanting to become a minority.
“You can stop standing there deciding how to break the news,” he said. “I heard we’re leaving.”
“You’re okay with it?”
“The winds of change don’t blow us straight to our destination.” His fingers fiddled with two brightly colored wires in a way that made Evyleen cringe. She had to remind herself that not only was he skilled, but his power gave him extra leeway. “I’ve come to terms with the idea.”
“Most folks there won’t look like us.” She felt bad saying it in front of Jerry and Sally, but they already knew Esilray’s ideas, and she would rather clear the air now than let resentment grow. “I know that’s a thing for you.”
“This Empire hurts them almost as bad as it hurts us. I’ll team up with them for a time.” He filled up a pock
et of gunpowder from where it had leaked, and then reclosed that section of the round. “In the end, we all just want our countries back.”
11
The Wisdom of Fading
Elder Oraka paced the room, agitated beyond all good sense. These past few days had been nothing but disturbances, and their island was quickly descending into the type of chaos found only in the ancient stories: people being late, heated arguments, occasional crying fits… someone even punched a wall! And then there was his friend and mentor, who had said one thing and then did something different. “I thought you said Toraburu had dangerous ideas…”
“I did say that. I believe it, too.”
“Yet you voted for the Toraburu plan. You’re going to give one of our best fishing boats to devils.” One he’d worked hard on back in his youth, too. It felt personal.
“We have to protect the island.”
“So you believe him?”
“The crack is nothing. Toraburu and Choro are the only ones who actually believe it will cause a problem, but the Toraburu plan solves many other problems. You aren’t as far into your fading as I am, you haven’t seen the world as it is for very long, but trust me: if we let those devils stay here, there will be trouble. They’ll be bad, like all devils, and cause much pain. We have no defenses against them aside from staying hidden. Or, worse, they’ll pretend to be good, and our people will be tricked into thinking that everyone else is good, that we can coexist. Devils were fearsome a thousand years ago when we split, and they spend their lives thinking of new ways to hurt each other. Our island would be destroyed. The devils have to go back.”
It made a certain sense, in a twisted way. It was something the old thinkers from the books would have come up with, with their politics and scheming. To think, children used to be plunged into this world as early as sixteen… “But sending Karugo and the others… what if they don’t return?”
“I’d consider that a bonus.”
12
Luxury For All
The hammer felt good in Freddy’s hands, much more familiar than the cutlass and compass he’d been forced to take up this past year. There had always been things that needed fixing around the farm: the house, the barn, all his tools, and if he ever got bored he could go and drive in some new fenceposts.
However, his comfort only stretched as far as the tool and the materials. This boat was wildly different than any of the things he’d worked on at the farm, and it stuck out even among the ships he’d seen at sea. “How do you know what changes to make?” he asked Jack.
“Just because the design’s a thousand years out of date doesn’t mean it’s gonna follow different rules at sea. Just keep afloat and everything will be fine.”
Freddy tensed at the phrase ‘keep afloat’. It wasn’t just the thought of drowning at sea in this ancient vessel and getting eaten by a cœurbrute… ‘keep afloat’ was what he’d desperately tried to do for years, even to the point where he secretly gotten a second mortgage to pay off the first.
“Don’t worry, buddy. We get done with this, you’ll have enough mezgol to buy your farm back ten times over.”
“They’re going to stick us back in jail if we don’t find Evyleen.”
“You were in debtor’s prison. Money makes you free, by definition.”
“What about you?”
“I know that rich people don’t get convicted.” Jack flourished his hammer like a gavel. “And guess what I’ll be soon…”
“You were already in jail. I don’t think it works like that.”
“Get your mind out of the dirt, boy! You haven’t learned a single thing while sailing with Sam, have you?”
“I learned that every single person on that ship, except for Guffy, got themselves arrested.”
“Sam only got arrested after he became poor again. The swordsmen are nobodies. Ezra hangs out with animals all day. Guffy’s an idiot. And can you imagine Syldris chasing money? She should, of course, but she’s too blind to see that money is the ultimate superpower.”
That sounded dubious. “What about invincibility? That seems like it would be a pretty good power. Especially if it came with anti-aging abil—”
“Look, do you want your farm back or not?”
“Well, yeah…”
“Then help me out here. We fix this ship, get it seaworthy. We take some Timonite crystals with us for seed money, we use that seed money to bring in the miners. We charge tariffs to the Knyn traders. We buy off the judges — gotta have campaign money to get elected, right? — and then we’re home free.”
That sounded pretty good, but they were far enough away from the central dampening crystals that he could have something approaching a properly worrying thought. “What if they destroyed my farm? What if they ask for twice what they paid for it and it’s a mess and nothing’s where I remember it?”
“Then you could kill them. Get your revenge.”
“Isn’t that illegal?”
“It’s only illegal if you get caught. Hire an assassin.”
“I don’t know…”
“Oh, you want the satisfaction of staring them down and killing their loved ones in front of them while they watch helplessly? We can make that happen. The kind of money we’ll get from this island can buy a lot of training.”
He remembered watching Syldris, seeing how powerful she was. Could that be him? The calm invulnerability of Sink 'em Sam was forever out of his reach, but Syldris… that level of fearsomeness could be his.
But that would mean killing someone. He imagined himself holding a dagger to some banker’s throat, watching the blood leak into the earth, burying the body.
He knew that if he was fully free of the suppression field, the mild queasiness he felt would be a sickening revulsion. “Maybe I’ll just go with an assassin. If I do it at all. Isn’t buying it back cheaper?”
“Then you’ll be rewarding the person who stole from you. Those who can’t commit violence will always be destroyed by those who can. The ability to commit violence is the ultimate superpower.”
“Wait, I thought you said that money—”
“Hush, someone’s coming.”
——
“Splashing hurricanes,” cursed Jack. The people walking down the hill towards them were not who he wanted to see. “The geezers said we’d be meeting our crew today, but them?”
It was the two kids they’d fought earlier. The blonde-haired one skipped toward them unnervingly while the green-haired one lagged behind and wore a calm disturbing grin.
Jack adjusted the sword in his belt so he could reach it more easily. No danger here, not with these islanders and especially not from two teenage boys they’d already beaten soundly, but it was habit to get everything ready when a stranger approached.
“At least we don’t have to worry about them taking over the ship,” said Freddy. “Hey, we’ll be in charge this time! You’ll be the Sam, I’ll be the Syldris. They’ll be the underlings.”
“I think you mean captain, first mate, and crew.”
The first one bounced his way to their ship. “I’m Karugo!” he said brightly.
“I know,” replied Jack.
“Are the other devils like you? What’s your island like? What’s your name?”
Jack grimaced. He’d have to deal with these two kids for a while, hopefully without hurting them, so it was best to smooth over rough first meetings and try to get friendly. “Call me Stylin’ Jack,” he replied.
“What’s a stylin’? Is that a type of island?” Whatever his flaws, at least the kid didn’t seem bothered that they’d fought last time they met.
“It describes me. You can’t see it because my power’s suppressed, but—”
“People put descriptions in front of their names?”
“Yeah. When you sail—”
“I’m gonna call you Black Jack. What should I be?”
“I told you, I’m Stylin’ Jack.” It would be hard to get through the trip without hurting this kid
. Jack shifted his goal to not hurting him before leaving the island. “Why don’t we call you Green Bean? Because you’re small and I don’t like you.”
“But I’m one of the least green people here.”
Jack gripped his hammer tight and brought it down on a rock to express his frustration. The sound made Freddy and Hishano jump. “I’m not dry enough to deal with a punk like you.”
“I want to try that!” said Karugo. The boy lunged to grab the hammer and Jack instinctively batted him away with a backhand to the face.
So much for his goals.
Karugo picked himself up off the ground and rubbed his jaw giddily. “You’re not like them at all!” He went for the hammer again.
Couldn’t the kid take a hint? Jack pulled the hammer back threateningly. “If you don’t stop I’ll give you worse.”
“I can’t believe it!” The kid danced for joy. “I’m not the worst-behaved person anymore!”
Freddy laid a shaking hand on Jack’s shoulder. “Maybe we shouldn’t hit our new shipmates.”
If it was a big enough deal that Freddy could work up the courage to call him out, then maybe he should stop. If he wanted to lead this expedition, he needed to start acting like a captain.
What would Sam do? Sam would be calm. Collected. Fatherly.
Jack could pull that off.
“Is he your Hishano?” asked Karugo, pointing at Freddy.
“What?” The question caught him off guard, but he tried to put some element of captain in his tone.
“The person who makes sure you don’t do bad things,” explained Karugo.
Jack wasn’t sure how to respond, so he, in a very captainly manner, let his jaw drop while he stared as if the boy was an idiot.
“Don’t worry,” said the other kid, “the Elders say you can’t help it. You were born evil.”
So the stare wasn’t working. Sam had used it so effectively, made it look so effortless! Captaining would be harder than he thought.