by N. M. Howell
She finally settled down enough to realize how beautiful the view was. She stopped and leaned on the railing. She’d only seen the Spider Sea once before, but never from a ship. The sun was falling into the horizon, and the sky overhead was like a chest full of gold that someone had tossed across the black of space. And below, the sea was endless, already beginning to be dappled with the light of the trench spiders. They were coming up from the caves, where they rest during the day, to play near the surface of the sea during the night.
The water seemed ten times darker than it was when they came up and brought the incredible silver light of their bodies. Trench spiders looked similar to the spiders on land, only about twenty times bigger and their eight legs were like eight long feathers. Their thorax looked like a dandelion. Andie couldn’t help but notice how stunning they were, thousands upon thousands of those little silver lights coming up from the trenches as far as the eye could see.
“They’re kind of incredible.”
Andie was startled by the voice, but it was only Raesh. He looked well, like he hadn’t been hurt much during the escape, but Andie wasn’t really surprised. Raesh’s magic couldn’t be controlled like hers could, but he was still extremely powerful, and he was learning how to use his particular kind of magic to his advantage. She was so busy looking him over for injuries that it took her a moment to realize he was smiling at her. She smiled back.
“I see you came out practically unscathed,” she said.
“With the exception of a few bruised ribs and a smattering of completely not serious cuts. My dad got it a little worse, I think. But, he’ll be fine.”
“Speaking of your dad. I just spoke with him and Yara.”
“And I can tell by the tone of your voice that he told you about the traitor and certain people who have yet to be ruled off his list of suspects?”
“He told you about that? You mean he actually told you to your face that he didn’t trust you?”
“Well, it wasn’t quite like that. You have to understand, he’s being thorough. You and he are our leaders and, honestly, neither of you can afford to make any kind of move without thinking of every possible outcome. I know he wants to trust me, but he has to look out for so many people now. And, you know, for all he knows, I could be one hundred percent loyal to him, but be under a professor’s spell or something.”
Andie stared at him for a minute but eventually relented.
“I know,” she said, running her hands through her hair in frustration. “I had the same thought, as well. I just can’t believe this is happening. How could one of our own friends do this to us? It’s unreal. And maybe Marvo is a leader, but Yara should know you two well enough to give you the benefit of the doubt.”
“Maybe you should cut her some slack.”
“For what? You gonna tell me she’s a leader, too?”
“In her defense, she caught Carmen and me talking about some things.”
“Like what? What could make her doubt you two? What, were you planning to capture me and render me powerless?”
Raesh looked away and didn’t respond. Andie waited and watched him, feeling her joke lose its humor dramatically as the seconds passed.
“Raesh?”
“You have to understand, Andie. You’re the most powerful person we know. Maybe one of the most powerful in the world.”
“I think that’s a bit of an over exaggeration, Raesh,” Andie snorted.
“No, I’m serious. You’re both sorceress and dragonborn. I’ve searched the records, and I don’t think there’s been anyone else like you… ever.”
Andie blinked and stared at him a long moment, but she supposed she hadn’t heard of another like her, either.
“And we don’t even know the extent of what your dragonblood can do,” Raesh continued. “Andie, you can fly. You can make lightning stronger, brighter, and hotter than anything I’ve ever seen. Your body can heal any injury. There might not even be a limit to your power. We know, beyond anything, you would never willingly betray us, but if you were ever to fall under the control of one of the professors or anyone else… I don’t know if we’d ever be able to stop you.”
Andie considered him a moment and then nodded. “I suppose you’re right.”
“It was only a list of possible contingency plans,” Raesh said. When Andie turned to look at him, her eyes blazing, he quickly added, “None of which we kept, by the way. But, Yara happened to overhear us. I think deep down she knows we’d never do it unless we had to, but it really shook her up, and I guess I never realized how much.”
“I see,” Andie said, turning from him to the sea.
They stared out at nothing for nearly ten minutes, letting the silence fill them as they thought about the relationships and potential in their lives. Finally, Andie sighed.
“I’m sorry, Raesh. I know it’s something no one wants to admit, but something we all should be worried about. If anybody ever figured out how to control me, it would be… catastrophic. And, if I’m being honest, I guess what really has me so freaked out is passing out during the escape.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s humiliating.”
“Don’t even start with that,” Raesh said, turning to her. “You’re dragonborn. You need the sun to stay strong, and none of us even knew that. You’d been underground for eight months. If you weren’t so powerful, you wouldn’t have even been able to do as much as you did. You took out two of those Sentinels. You’re the reason we survived.”
“Well, in the interest of giving credit where credit is due, you took out one yourself. What were those things anyway?”
“I have no freaking clue. No one has ever even heard of them. It did say it was from the Old World. Whatever they are, they’re powerful. Incredibly powerful.”
“I don’t remember what happened after I took down those two. Who all did we lose?”
“By the time we made it outside, there weren’t many of us left. We ran as fast as we could, and my dad and I carried you. The Searchers chased us and never stopped firing. We lost another on the way out.”
“How did we escape?”
“We made it to SKY 6 and took over the train. We started down Brie and, for a while, we thought we were safe, but the Searchers had got on the train, too, and they brought five more of those Sentinels with them. We couldn’t really fight them off. There weren’t enough of us then, and you were unconscious.”
“Raesh,” Andie tried to make out the expression on Raesh’s face, but he stared out at the setting sun, his face as blank as she had ever seen it. “I’m so sorry I wasn’t able to help.”
Raesh didn’t even seem to hear her. He continued as if she hadn’t even spoke. “We lost two more in the fighting. One of the Searchers set the train on fire with his gun, and then the train started to shake. The gravity control gave out. Before we knew it, we were all floating, but it gave us the upper hand. We managed to take out all of the Searchers, but the Sentinels were too strong. They killed two more of us and hurt my dad.”
“I…”
“The only thing that saved us from them was the same thing that almost killed us. The train went off the rails. Yara and Carmen locked us all in a protective shell. The Sentinels almost broke through their magic, but they were thrown as the train cars tumbled, flipped, and raced down the mountain. Everything was tearing apart around us. Crashing, exploding, being ripped away. We finally landed at the bottom, half alive, but away from the Sentinels. Luckily, my dad’s friends were still waiting by the sea. And we escaped.”
“That sounds incredibly terrifying. Raesh, I’m so sorry I couldn’t help. I’m sorry I wasn’t strong enough to…”
“Andie, stop.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It was a nightmare. But we made it.”
“Yeah, you did. And you saved me, too.”
She gave Raesh’s shoulder a squeeze, and he finally looked back at her as if he had been pulled away from a dream. He looked haunted, but he s
miled back.
“I guess I did.”
Later that night as Andie was lying in her bed, restless beyond anything imaginable, she heard the door open behind her. She turned over to see who it was. Yara. Yara first walked into the room, and then took a step back and leaned on the open doorway. Andie could tell she had something she wanted to say, but after the cold shoulders they’d exchanged earlier, it was difficult for them to face each other.
Andie turned back over, hoping Yara would talk herself out of whatever half apology she was thinking up just then. For a long time, Yara sat staring at the wall, not speaking, not moving, hardly even breathing, and Andie lay in her bed, trying desperately to fall into the sleep she knew would never come when she wanted it.
“You think you’ve got it all figured out.”
Andie grew angry almost instantly. If Yara had come to apologize, it would have been bad enough, but to come into the room in the middle of the night and accuse her? And exactly what was she accusing her of?
“You can lie there and pretend to be asleep or pretend that you can’t hear me. It’ll only make this easier. You think that because we’re all here together and we have a history that we can all be trusted. Given the benefit of the doubt outright. Well, that’s the definition of a traitor, Andie. Someone you trust. Someone you would never suspect in a million years.”
Andie lay still, listening. The gentle sway of the ship rocked them back and forth, the sound of the ocean on the other side of the smooth wooden walls a muted rhythm that Andie hoped would lull her to sleep.
“The University is smart, so smart,” Yara continued. “They know who matters to you most and who you would blindly put your faith in. All Marvo and I are trying to do is protect the more than five hundred lives on this ship, including yours. And I’ll pretend I didn’t notice when you forgave Marvo practically immediately and yet you won’t even turn over now to look at me. Whatever.”
Andie sighed and turned towards the doorway where Yara stood with her arms crossed. Her expression smoldering in the dim light. “Yara…”
“But it doesn’t matter,” Yara interrupted. “I’m still your friend. I’m still your ally. I’m still the girl you asked to come along on this impossible mission with you because you knew that I would always do the right thing.”
“I asked Carmen, too.”
“Well, Carmen isn’t cleared yet. It’s like you’re not even listening to me!”
Yara pushed herself away from the door and paced for a bit. Andie curled herself up even more, grabbing the pillow up around her head in a fruitless effort to get more comfortable. After a few minutes of pacing angrily, Yara threw herself onto her bed.
“I’ve been in Arvall City for the last ten years. Since I was sixteen. But I wasn’t always there. I was born on the other side of Noelle. It was a small town, a village really. It didn’t even have a name. It was like it was the place that time forgot. That everything forgot. But we were happy there. We didn’t have much, but we had each other.”
Andie tried to read Yara’s face, but she simply stared up at the ceiling, refusing to meet Andie’s gaze.
“Actually, we were pretty poor. Unbelievably poor. But so was everybody else.” Yara spoke slowly, as if recalling a painful memory that she had hoped to forget. “For a long time, I didn’t even recognize that we didn’t have money or nice things, but the older I got, the more I began to understand that we weren’t okay, that we had nothing. And I remember I would get so angry when I looked around our house, or what was left of it, and see that we were living like… like I don’t even know what. So, I started to steal. Little things at first. Bananas, potatoes, towels. Things we needed to survive. My mother would ask where they came from and I would lie, saying people gave them to me or I found them or I earned them from doing jobs around the village. But soon I grew bored. I wanted more. So, I started stealing other things. Money. Family heirlooms. Clothes. Things we didn’t need, but I wanted. But that wasn’t enough either.”
“Why are you telling me this?” Andie asked, but Yara ignored her question.
“I started sneaking around the big cities that were to the north of us. And by then I was good. I was the best. You can’t imagine all the things I had. Money, jewelry, more food and clothes and things than I could use in a lifetime. And then one day I decided never to go home again. To stay in the city and live the life I thought I deserved. I was only fifteen, but people care less about your age and more about what you can do for them when you have the skillset I did. And so, I left.”
“Yara…”
“My parents came looking for me. My connections told me they were getting close, so I hid away where they would never find me,” Yara continued. “A few months passed. I came out again, and I found out that they had never left. They’d stayed in the city, living in an alley behind the apartment I’d been staying in. Some gang was doing their business in the alley and my parents were just there and happened to see it. And so, they killed them. They slaughtered my parents right there in the alley like they were nothing. Of course, they did it with magic, and the police didn’t have the resources to track that kind of attack. And it was days before anybody even noticed the smell and found the bodies.”
“I’m so sorry,” Andie whispered. She had no idea her friend’s life had been so dark.
“It was strange. All I had to do was go down and see them. Talk to them. Tell them I didn’t want to go home, that I could provide for all three of us there in the city. And it wasn’t even them I was running away from. It was poverty. It was hunger and cold and fear. I just wanted to feel safe in my own life.”
Andie didn’t know what to say. Yara was opening up about her past for the first time, saying things Andie never could have imagined. She didn’t know how to react. She loosened the ball she’d made of herself and turned over to her other side so that she faced Yara completely. Yara was still staring up at the ceiling. Her eyes seemed lost, her face blank and her eyes hurt. Andie was about to speak, even if it was just to mumble some trite expression, but she stopped herself, sensing Yara wasn’t finished.
“By then I knew I was a sorceress and that I was pretty powerful, so I practiced my magic and learned as many spells as I could remember. It took me almost a year before I thought I was ready. And then I found them. The gang. With my connections, it didn’t take long. By then I was sixteen and legal. I didn’t have to sneak around anymore. I followed them to their hideout…”
Yara paused. The waves against the ship’s hull below now nearly deafening in the silence that threatened to consume the room.
“…and I killed them.”
Andie felt her entire body go tense. She wondered if she’d heard correctly. Did her best friend just admit to being a murderer?
“It was the worst mistake I ever made in my life. Even now, ten years later, it haunts me. Every time I do magic or think about fighting the University, I remember those men. The way they looked when I was finished with them. Andie, you have to understand that I don’t think I’m above you or Carmen or Raesh. Or anyone else. I don’t think I’ve earned your trust or your friendship. But I know what can happen to a person when they come under strain. True, honest strain.”
Yara finally turned to look at Andie, her eyes darker and more haunted than Andie had ever seen. “You don’t have to be evil to be capable of it. All I want is to make sure that every person on this ship is still intact and then find the one person on this ship who’s broken. So, no, I’m not going to trust someone’s intentions just because I know them. And yes, I will make it my duty to personally assess Raesh and Carmen before they’re cleared. And you can hate me for that, but I don’t really care.”
Andie stared incredulously at her but finally nodded. Yara nodded back and returned her gaze back up to the ceiling.
“And one last thing,” Yara added. “I abandoned my parents, and they died. I won’t abandon this group. Not in any way. Not ever.”
Yara leaned back in the bed, covered hersel
f fully with her blankets, and lay there silently. Andie stared at her for several moments, trying to figure out what to say or if she was supposed to say anything at all. But before she could come up with anything appropriate to say, Yara had fallen asleep.
Chapter Six
The next day was a little better for everyone onboard. The chaos of the escape was a little further behind them, but the traitor still had everyone terrified. They didn’t know if the person was just giving information to the University, or if he or she had orders to kill them in their sleep. Everyone was suspicious of everyone except their closest friends, and so divisions grew up overnight. Even then, no one liked to be surrounded by more than three people at a time. Tensions were high, maybe even insurmountable. Rumors of who the traitor could be spread faster than wildfire, and Andie had had just about enough.
Andie was meeting with the captain that morning. They’d already docked in the True Isles, but the order had come up from Marvo that no one was to leave the ship yet. Andie had spent half the morning trying to comprehend the story Yara had told her and trying to separate how she felt about Yara’s past from how she felt about Yara now. She’d spent the other half of the morning thinking of where the dragonborn might go for safety. Both dragons and dragonborn preferred mountainous regions if the history books were to be believed. She certainly felt like it could be true.
Brie was the highest mountain by far, but there was no way they would ever go back there. It would be too dangerous. They had been spotted most recently over Abhainn, which was almost the geographical center of Noelle. She hoped they would be smart enough to seek safety elsewhere.