by Meg Merriet
I banged on the door and Dirk opened it for me.
“Oh, Ramona,” whispered Rex. “A girl never forgets her first.”
We sealed the prisoner back in darkness. Dirk’s eyes met mine in the firelight.
“Clikk,” he said gently.
Had he heard the conversation between us? I remembered the slot in the bottom of the door.
“I’m done with him,” I said.
I followed the corridor to the stairwell. I didn’t want to talk. I didn’t want to think about Rex ever again. I would leave him and all the memories associated with him down in that dank, dark hole to shrivel and shrink into oblivion.
As king, Derek promised all his men a warm bed and a living wage in his military for as long as we liked. Taking dominion of the castle was all so surreal. As much as I knew that Dirk was now my country’s monarch, I’d never be able to stomach calling him King Derek, much less Your Grace. He would always be Captain Dirk.
As I lay on my bed, tuning my new fiddle, the sun was setting outside my window, filling my chamber with an orange glow. I had my own quarters in the palace, as well as a butler to bring me tea and greet my guests at the door. It surprised me when Baker entered unannounced; my butler came in behind him, bumbling an apology.
“It’s no trouble, Mr. Peake,” I said, setting down my fiddle. “Leave us.”
My butler nodded and excused himself, closing the door behind him as he left.
Baker stared at my outfit, my ruffled poet shirt and laced britches. “You’re still dressing like a man,” he said.
“And you as well.” I nodded at his same dirty frock coat he always wore in the cities. Baker hadn’t embraced the fashionable attire of court, but he did have a clean shave. “Truth is, I feel quite silly in a dress,” I said. “Are you here about your watch?”
“No,” he said. “I won’t ask you to fix it until I can pay you back your two silver. I’m turning over a new leaf.”
“Ah, well, in the interest of new beginnings, consider the debt forgiven,” I said. “If you’re not here about the watch, why are you here?”
“I…well…” Baker crossed his arms and shrugged, smiling as if he knew exactly why but couldn’t verbalize it. “It turns out, I don’t much care for nobles or their parties and frivolous ways. I thought I might head out with a crew bound for Amaranthia, but I couldn’t. Something was holding me back. Someone rather.”
“How now,” I said. I avoided his eye contact and stared at a porcelain water pitcher instead. “I know your type. I’m nothing like it.”
“I don’t think I ever had a type,” he said. “All my life, women were either whores or wives. My mum was a whore until I was fourteen, and then wife to the devil who beat us both. I never had anyone. Never wanted anyone. You could throw me out of an airship to ride the wind, but the suggestion of love, that’s for madmen. You’d have to hold me at gunpoint. Except you wouldn’t. And that’s why I haven’t left. I did not fight this war for Dirk. Not for Elsace either. I did it for you. I’d follow you into mutiny, into certain death, because I’m in love with you.”
When I didn’t say anything, he meandered towards the window, gazing out like some tragic figure. I joined him, leaning against the encasement on the other side. Outside a courtyard of metal-forged fountains glistened like liquid steel.
“Baker in love?” I said. “I don’t know what to say to that, friend. If you’re only after a jolly, I’d rather you be honest about it.”
“It isn’t that simple.”
A smirk pulled at the corner of my mouth. “Is seduction simple for you?”
“Like you and your watches.”
“You’re a bloody rake,” I said. “You’ve opened more women than I’ve done watches.”
“I haven’t done!”
“How many then?”
“Are we including ladies of the night?”
“‘Course we are.”
“Then that’s… fourteen. No. Fifteen,” he said.
I was taken aback. “That’s it?”
“Several of them I actually cared about.”
“Hm,” I said. “I swore off rogues long ago. I’ll not be jilted again.”
“I’m not perfect. I might tease you or steal a sip of your Skye while your back is turned, but I would never betray your heart.” He took my hand and my heart trembled. “Not for anyone.”
I shook my head, swallowing a lump in my throat. He was beginning to sway me, which scared me. It was already terrifying how I craved him like Skye. “I can’t be something I’m not, and if you’re with me, there are people who will whisper and point, who might even call you deviant,” I said.
“I don’t care.” He came closer still, pressing his forehead against mine. “I love you, Clikk.”
“Thomas.” I said his name with care. “When we’re alone, you may call me Ramona, if you like.”
“Ramona of Shale,” he whispered, brushing my hair behind my ear. His words and his touch made me ache for him. I wound my fingers into the laces of his tunic and tilted my face up to meet his lips with mine. His taste was like ambrosia, like something I couldn’t have enough of no matter how long I lingered. The floor beneath my feet shifted as if we were back on the Wastrel, taking flight.
Pale dawn shone in through the window, and just outside, the pigeons perched in huddles on the flower box. The calming roll of their voices made me want to sleep more, but I knew that if I did, I would be missing these minutes of perfect happiness. My beloved lay at my side, awake and pretending not to be, and for a while I pretended not to be as well, and we stayed like this, cherishing our waking dream of love.
I traced the sparrow tattoos flitting down his forearm. I had none of my own. Nothing in my life had ever been permanent. Baker had a hawk on his pectoral muscle, and a vaporous black cloud on the opposing shoulder. I could have remained there a fortnight, learning every scar and every line of ink on him. We couldn’t know how much time we had to enjoy such harmony, and so I savored this moment with all my being.
I still wondered if I could trust him, and if his heart was true. In so many ways, the answer felt simple, but then I remembered that lovers often change in the night, reveal some shadow that was so clearly there all along. All I could do was surrender. There was uncertainty in love, like that in a bout of turbulence, in which one yields control to the wind and to the ship herself.
I reached for my fiddle and played a slow melody that moved like drifting clouds in the light of dawn. It came to me from some invisible muse. The notes fell into place, and I played a song as ancient as the sky. I marveled at the thought of love and how people called it falling, for to fall was something else entirely, and love had little to do with it. Love was more like flying.
There came a gentle rapping on the door. I reached for my tunic and threw it on over my head. “Come in,” I called.
My butler cracked the door just a jar and spoke through the opening. “Forgive the intrusion. The princess requests an audience with you.”
I had completely forgotten to check in with Molly. I put my fiddle away and hurried to get dressed. “Thank you, Mr. Peake. I will be ready shortly.” I was lacing up the side panels of my britches when an arm hooked around my waist.
“This is now a hostage situation,” whispered Baker, pulling me in.
“The princess has summoned me.”
“Then I shall send her my demands.”
“What demands?”
“All the gold in the royal treasury, a canary that recites poems in Nazari, a ship that turns rain into Skye and enough guns to steal you back.”
I bit my lip and against all my instincts, slipped away from him. “Leaving you now is the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” I said, “but I must go.”
“Are you going to accept her offer?” he asked.
“Her offer?”
“Princess Molly adores you. I suspect she will want you to take up a position in court.”
“What would you have me do?”
<
br /> “Your choice is your own,” he said. “You know me better than anyone; you know I can’t stay here in Locwyn. My feelings for you will remain unchanged whatever you decide, and we will find a way to be together.”
I frowned, shaking my head. “I knew two lovers once who like majestic oaks needed room to thrive, but you and I are more like twisting vines that depend on each other’s fortitude to climb out of despair. I don’t want us to ever be apart.”
Baker laced his fingers with mine and kissed my hand. “Then I should stay at your side,” he said. “I would entreat you not to take up residence here. This city holds a long list of bad memories for me.”
“Yes. For me as well,” I said. “I should be off.”
“I think I will sleep some more.” He rolled onto his face.
“Try not to suffocate yourself.”
Pillows muffled his laughter. I made myself presentable and went to be received by Princess Molly.
She resided in her mother’s old room atop a tower of iron stairs, and obeying her summons proved quite the trial. The climb exhausted me, each step stinging more than the last, leading me to understand why her guards had not escorted me to her door. As I neared, I heard the child singing, her voice echoing through the metallic casing of the stairwell.
The doors and windows to her room hung open spilling sun throughout. Saturated in light, Molly looked radiant in her lavender dress. She stopped singing and ran towards me, leaping into my arms and smothering me with her puffy tulle sleeves. I caught the girl and set her down gently.
“Hello there, Princess.”
“I knew all along you would make it! I was watching from the Eclipse when your ship exploded! The crew said, ‘No chance they made it out.’ I told them better, those oafs!”
“Oh, heavens,” I said, noticing the wall behind her. I laughed outright. She had finished her hairwork, and Fiona’s blonde locks were configured into the image of a falcon taking flight, pressed in glass within a cherry wood frame. “Molly, you didn’t.”
“Do you like it?” I could hardly breathe, much less answer her. “Don’t laugh at me, Clikk! I had nothing at all to do these past few weeks!”
“I’m sorry,” I said, clearing my throat to resist chuckling. “It’s lovely. Truly.”
“Well,” she said. “You certainly do seem different. All smiles. Does this have anything to do with your beau?”
“Molly!” I chided. “Who told you about that?”
“You, just now,” she said. “It’s that man with the dreadlocks, isn’t it?”
“Someone told you. I’ll kill that Mr. Peake.”
“No no no!” Molly choked on her laughter. “Yesterday, Baker came asking Dirk where to find you. We filled in the rest, and you just confirmed it.”
I shrugged, stumbling over my own words as I murmured, “I wouldn’t call him my beau exactly. It’s all happened so suddenly. We shall see how it goes.”
“He’d better not take you away from me. You’re staying here in Locwyn, aren’t you?”
“For now.”
“Oh no,” she stammered. “You don’t mean that. Not truly.”
“Baker cannot withstand a landlocked city, and we both feel like outsiders this far north. Just remember, Molly, wherever I go, we shall always remain friends.”
“You can’t go. Dirk needs your counsel. We have a nation to feed! And he’s going to knight you, you know? Don’t tell him I told you. Try to look surprised. Memorize this face you’re making now.”
“Knight me?” I could only mouth the words for my voice was completely lost. “I could never.”
“Don’t you want to be a knight?”
“Do I look like a knight to you?” I asked.
“No,” she sighed, dreary sorrow asphyxiating her glow. “You look… like a sky pirate.”
I gave her shoulder a tender squeeze. “I don’t plan to return to all that brutality, but I should never stay grounded long.”
“What if…” she said, looking up. “What if I asked my brother to make you his emissary? You could travel all over the world as a representative of the king you put into power.”
This proposition appealed to me. “I might consider that,” I said.
“There is one condition. It is only that on occasion you take me with you.”
“I suppose it’s only fair,” I said. “Does this mean you’re not afraid of flying anymore?”
“Well, I won’t have to worry about storms with you around, and should we encounter sky pirates, I’m certain they’ll let us go once they recognize you.”
“Oh, most definitely,” I said. “We’re all chums in Amaranthia.”
Molly smiled. “Now for the real reason I called you here.” She went to her rocking chair and retrieved two needlepoint hoops fitted with linen.
“Oh no,” I said. “No, Molly.”
“Please, Clikk! Let me teach you some proper needlepoint.”
“I told you I already know needlepoint.”
“Humor me,” she said.
One of the handkerchiefs already had green leaves stitched into the fabric. Molly went straight to work at it.
I consigned to my fate and took a moment to consider what I should embellish. Most people chose flowers or initials. I knew I should preserve some memory to keep in my pocket, some ideal to uphold in my conduct. I made a choice and executed the design, stitching with care.
Molly’s elaborate tree sprawled in coils of bronze and green. Her stitches lined up in neat succession and every root and branch had perfect form. She said the tree commemorated our adventure in the forest and would remind her of the day she came to know how much her brother loved her.
She looked over my shoulder to see what I had done. Having completed elegant embroidery, I proved I knew needlepoint after all. A name adorned the handkerchief in gold thread.
Ramona.
She was no ghost, and never had been. She was the bravest sky pirate who ever lived.
For updates on the progress on
Sky Song: Scherzo
and
Sky Song: Finale
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