by Abby Dewsnup
If Jay hadn’t pulled me away I would’ve stared at the Windwalkers for ages. They pulled metal objects from their belts, weapons I had never even known existed. A slim barrel attached to a handle, and when the weapon fired a loud sound erupted from the shaft. Men fell down on the deck after the explosion subsided, and they didn’t stand back up.
“Anya, c’ mon,” Jay shouted, grabbing me roughly. Roland was making his way towards us, his bow drawn as he cleared a path across the starboard.
The boy Warren landed next to me, his scarred hand grabbing my shoulder. “Look, girl—”
I jerked him off me and back peddled into Jay, my heart racing. His wings were enormous, but it was his grin that sent a violent flash of fear coursing through me. It was the grin of a thief, one who had stolen more lives than he had metal parts.
Jay grabbed my hand and led me away. He flung open the door to the quarters and shoved me inside as Warren approached us again, his hands raised.
I stumbled against the wall, watching Jay grapple with the door. Warren shoved his shoulder against it, preventing Jay from shutting it. “Hey man, listen!” Warren cried. “I’m not here to hurt you, I need help.”
“You can help by not killing us,” Jay shouted, his breathing labored from exertion. “We’re not even Skysailors!”
“I know — I want to leave, like you.” Warren heaved one final push against the door, and the hinges broke off. Jay smacked his head against the wall as Warren tumbled inside, his wings splintering the wood door into a hundred fragments.
The sound of the battle above us mixed with the grunting of the two boys in pain. I raced over to Jay, whose face had gone blank as he blinked away a daze.
Warren cursed loudly. “Are you lot daft or something?” He cried. “Where can a guy get a good escape route in here?”
“You can’t come with us,” I gasped out, trying to get Jay onto his feet.
A different Windwalker lumbered down the stairs, the metal weapon in his hand. He cackled, slamming against the stairs as if he was drunk. “Warren, ‘aye, ransack the entire downstairs. ‘We’re going home like rich men tonight,” he grunted out. “Take the kids with ya.”
Warren shrunk away from the man, pressing himself flat against the wall. “Will do,” he said. “Tell my father I’m taking out these two.”
The Windwalker lumbered away, oblivious to the fight raging outside. Warren let out a breath, closing his eyes for the briefest of moments, as if he had barely survived the encounter.
Despite myself, I felt sorry for him. Maybe he really was defecting from the Windwalkers.
“What makes you think I can help you escape?” I asked as Jay rose back to his feet, shaking away his daze.
Warren turned to me, a curl of hair flopping across his eyes. “My father called you a Vagabond. I knew you were my only hope. I’ll explain everything later. He’ll kill you if you don’t leave now.”
I bit my lip. “You don’t want to kill us?”
Warren hesitated, taken aback by the sudden question. “Don’t you trust me?” He asked.
“No, I’ve just met you, we’re strangers!” I shouted over the voices overhead.
“My name is Warren, I’m a Windwalker, and I made these wings myself,” he cried. “And you?”
“I’m — I’m Anya.”
Warren grinned. “See? Not strangers anymore. C’mon, or they’ll behead me!”
I stumbled with Jay down the hallway, leading Warren to the raft. A vagabond was a person who lacked a home, a drifter. My father used to call the homeless vagabonds, but as a child I had never thought much to the name.
“You’ll be beheaded?” I gasped out, finally making sense of his words. “For helping us?”
“No—your ship interrupted my formal execution. I can’t thank you enough. And I don’t intend to finish it,” he shouted over his shoulder.
Jay faltered. I took his hand and pulled him with me, knowing his silence meant he was still suffering from hitting his head in the stairwell. “We should help the crew,” he finally said, his voice slurred. “They’ll be killed if we don’t.”
“That’s none of your concern.” Roland had appeared like a ghost behind me, his forehead bleeding profusely. He slipped past me, ignoring Warren, and approached the wall ahead of us.
I knew the raft dangled outside. The wooden planks holding the ship together was all that stood in our path to freedom.
Roland didn’t hesitate. He kicked at the boards, and Warren copied his movements. The wood splintered away, revealing the setting sun through a foggy sky. The raft hung only feet away, shaking in the passing wind.
Roland leaped onto the boat and held his hand out for Jay to grasp. Jay pushed me in front of him, and I could only slightly protest. My shoulder ached as I took Roland’s hand.
The sensation of falling overcame me as my feet met with nothing but open air. Roland’s grip was strong, and I finally came crashing to the worn ground of the raft. Pain sliced down my back, but I ignored it.
Jay followed, landing next to me. Warren worked on slicing the ropes free, his bronze dagger unlike anything I had ever seen before. I wasn’t sure how the Windwalkers had such ingenious weapons — it seemed as if the rest of the Fringe was limited to swords of iron. Perhaps all the inventors in the world were born a Windwalker.
“Hold up,” I grabbed the wood edges of the boat, trying to rise to my feet. “This is a regular boat — we’re not going to float.”
“Just because it looks regular doesn’t mean it is,” Roland said, his voice muffled by the dagger clenched between his teeth. He worked at untying a series of knots around the helm. “Much like you, miss.”
“What?” I gasped out.
Roland tossed me a dagger. “Just help the Windwalker out, Cave.”
I scowled as I hacked away at the ropes, trying to keep my fingers clear of each blow. A cannon erupted above us on the deck, and an entourage of shouting voices accompanied the blast.
“We can’t leave the entire crew up there,” Jay shouted again. “Now that we have an escape, we can go help them and then return here.”
I stopped cutting the ropes and stared at my hands, contemplating what Jay had said. “They’ll kill us, like Warren said.”
“If you want to go back and help them, be my guest,” Roland cried, sweat beading down his forehead. “But if you want to get to the Light Districts in time, you’ll have to stick with me. Our lives are not yours to risk, Jay.”
I knew the Windwalkers could discover our location at any moment and make escape impossible. Despite the urgency of the situation, I put my dagger down. “Why are you helping us?” I asked Roland, raising my voice as the fighting drew nearer.
Roland was silent, still attempting to cut the boat free. He flicked his long hair aside and turned to me, the same anger and malice I had seen in him from the start looking prominent in his stormy eyes. “Because I want to escape this wretched ship as much as you do. We need to leave now.”
“No,” Jay interrupted us, his sword drawn. “Those people need our help up there. We don’t decide who lives and who dies.”
“The guy with the ponytail is right,” Warren said, a contraption spinning in his hand. “No offense, but my people are good at what they do. The crew will be fine — they only want some metal.”
“But they’re fighting back,” Jay retorted. “Your people will pry the metal from the Skysailor’s cold, dead hands.”
Warren shrugged. “Perhaps. Better their hands than yours, buddy.”
Jay shook his head in exasperation. “Anya?” He asked, turning to me. “You can’t possibly be okay leaving like this.”
“I’m sorry,” my voice felt raw when I spoke, and I couldn’t meet his gaze. “But I have to find my brother, and I don’t want to see the Stygian devour the Caves.”
Jay stared at me with a stricken gaze. What he said next would linger within me for a long while, the words scorching enough to stir me from sleep. “The Stygian and evils in the Fringe won’t
go away like this. If we want to win, we have to wage war against it, not combat it with the same darkness it’s made of.”
I swallowed the lump rising in my throat. “And if you die? What about your brother?”
Jay turned away from me and put his foot up against the hull as if he could jump from the raft and take on the entire Windwalker armada single-handedly. “What would he say, knowing I saved him in place of them?”
I didn’t have the chance to respond. “Hold on tight,” Warren said, his voice void of emotion. He gave one final slash at the rope, and it snapped loudly against the wooden hull. “I don’t know about you guys, but I wanna get out of here before my head is hanging from the dragon corpse.”
“Ignore them all,” Roland said to me, a grin crossing his stern face. “Your friend is trying to play the hero. You and I know when it’s best just to survive.”
Finally, the raft pulled away from the ship. I braced myself, expecting a fall, but the boat only wobbled in the air at the newfound freedom. A smaller set of coasters unfurled behind us, and the raft began to drift away from the ship.
Roland got to work on steering us into the open sky. The raft was surprisingly fast, and even when the Windwalkers began to shout and point at us we were much too far away for even their heavy wings to reach.
I sank to the floor and let my backpack fall from my shoulders. There wasn’t much room with the four of us, which forced Jay to press himself close to me. He was looking at his hands, and I watched as a stray piece of hair fell across his face.
I worried about food and water, and if Roland could navigate to the Light Districts from Coppice. I looked at Warren, who was filling the silence with introductions and brash jokes. Taking him from the ship may have been a mistake, but at least he was good with his hands.
A harrowing knot was winding itself in my stomach. We don’t decide who lives and who dies. All my life I had wanted to be a hero, to be greater than I was. That’s why I had remained a Light Smuggler — the job had seemed like the only way to give something back to the people around me.
But I wasn’t a hero. Smoke rose high in the sky, and flames were licking up the top deck of the Skysailor ship. As we flew away from the wreckage, I watched the gunfire and explosions, and felt them stifle my lungs.
I looked over at Jay, and he met my gaze with hardened, mournful eyes. I realized in that moment that Jay was a hero, a King who cried for a crew of people he had scarcely known.
Slowly, the knot began to unwind. I took a deep breath and rose to my feet. “Jay is right. We can’t leave anyone behind. Roland, turn this raft around.”
11
Flight
Jay’s eyes widened in gratitude. “I’m proud,” he said, raising his fist. I sighed and bumped my fist against his.
“Are you kidding me?” Roland cried, his hands still working with the ropes of the coaster. “Do you two even grasp the concept of staying alive? First, you attack the panther in the jungle and now — no, I’m not turning this raft around.”
“Do you want me to get beheaded?” Warren shouted, pointing a glaring, lanky finger at the burning Skysailor ship. “I can’t go back there.”
“Why was your own father going to execute you?” Jay asked, running a hand through his hair. “Who the heck even does that?”
“They do,” Warren cried again, looking frantic. “Windwalkers are superstitious, and I’ve always found that kind of funny, you know? So I thought, hey, I could get some better treatment around here if I was something — someone — else, and it worked.”
“Don’t tell me you faked being higher than a Windwalker. What did you say you were?” Roland asked.
Warren shrugged. “A Solifeer, you know, the one from the storybooks.”
Jay gaped at Warren as if he had committed a murder. “If you knew your people were superstitious why would you pretend to be a Solifeer, of all things?”
I had no idea what a Solifeer was. I stepped between them with my staff in hand, cutting off the conversation. “Roland, turn this raft around, or we’ll have to do it ourselves.”
Roland’s dark eyes gazed at my staff in disinterest. “And your wooden stick is supposed to intimidate me into sending you two onto a burning boat? I’m a hired Bounty Hunter, sweetheart. I know when to pick my battles.”
“It’s a good thing we’re not hired because we fight every battle,” Jay said with a crooked grin. “Anya, take my hand.”
“Excuse me?”
Jay raised his eyebrows in a you’re-embarrassing-me type of way, and I finally understood what he meant. Earlier, in Coppice, our hands had touched, and the world had turned strange around us. Jay and I together created some sort of energy, but I wasn’t sure why.
“You know what, I don’t care anymore,” Roland stepped away from the coaster seconds before Jay’s and my fingers laced together, and I was grateful Jay hadn’t forced me to show the odd light marks to Roland and Warren. As of right now, they remained a secret between Jay and I. Roland continued, saying, “But you two Caves better have a grand plan or I’m leaving you on the ship.”
Jay grabbed the ropes and began to steer us back towards the Skysailor boat. I pursed my lips, knowing we couldn’t drop in and attack the Windwalkers. “Well, you said they’re superstitious.” I pointed to Warren. “And this Solifeer thing is a big deal to them?”
“It’s a big deal to everyone except the Cave-Dwellers, it seems,” Roland muttered.
“Okay, so what if we pretend to be a Solifeer?” I ventured.
Warren shook his head. “Okay, first of all, fooling the Windwalkers is an art. And second of all, they’ve already fallen for that one, and I don’t think my dad is gonna believe any of you. Especially because I’m with you.”
“It doesn’t hurt to try,” I replied sharply. “Take us to the ship, Jay. We can handle it from there. What do I say to be a Solifeer?”
“You know, the Sun-Bringer, the rising dawn, the hero. Whatever.”
I wasn’t sure if pretending to be some mythical Solifeer was abusing the strange light marks on my skin, but there wasn’t a better use for them, anyway.
Jay pulled us up next to the splintered hole we had created, our raft bumping against the side. I jumped into the hallway, using the walls to steady myself as the ground became solid beneath my feet. The hall was empty, but smoke hung heavy in the air. Above us, the deck had gone suspiciously silent, aside from the crackling of flames.
Jay landed next to me. Warren refused to follow us, and Roland stayed with him in case he decided to go rogue and leave us all behind on the ship. Roland assured us he’d be there for when we needed to make a quick escape. I didn’t feel reassured.
Despite a growing worry, I followed Jay up the stairs. A part of me was whispering that there was something wrong, that we missed a key piece that was put into place by the Windwalkers. If Warren knew of their true intentions, he would’ve told Jay and me before we tried to save the crew, right?
We stopped at the top step. Jay crouched down and I copied him, peering through the slit at the bottom of the door.
“I’m glad we agree on something for once,” he whispered.
“Don’t press your luck,” I replied.
Pairs of boots were stomping around on deck, keeping well away from the fire they had started on the mast. One of the men dropped a heavy bag to the ground. Their voices were gruff and indistinguishable, but it seemed as if they were searching for someone — probably Warren, the runaway Windwalker due for a hanging.
“Check the bunks again,” a man shouted.
Jay cursed and pulled me down the steps. We were too late — a Windwalker threw open the door, causing it to wobble on a single door hinge. Sunlight flooded into the hallway, and I stumbled to my feet.
The Windwalker’s eyes scanned us with greed. His metal hand stroked the doorway. “What’s this? Two little birdies hiding in the stairwell? Where’s Warren, raven girl?”
“The crap is with you people and nicknames?”
I asked, fingering my dark hair as my other hand reached for the staff on my back. “What does that make Jay? A sparrow?”
The Windwalker grinned a shark-like grin. I hadn’t stepped far enough into the hall, and without warning his metal hand shot out and snatched the collar of my shirt. His giant wings blocked the exit, and I struggled against him. His hand whirred and clicked into place. I felt the metal of a bronze blade pressed against my throat.
Jay had his sword drawn and braced in trembling hands. His expression was firm, but his eyes grazed over the knife against my neck in a split-second of panic. I stopped struggling, trying to keep my heart from hammering.
“Drop your weapon and come with me above deck,” the Windwalker said. “Your friend won’t fly when we push her overboard, I can assure you that.”
Jay’s eyes fell on me. There was a moment of hesitation, and I waited for Jay to lunge forward and get us both killed. Miraculously, he sighed and dropped his sword, letting the Windwalker haul us up the stairs.
“You and your brilliant plans,” I breathed.
“This was meant to happen,” Jay replied indignantly.
Even the Windwalker laughed at the comment.
The ship was in chaos. The fire was spreading across the mast, and even the sails were curling away in ash and smoke. I worried it was unstable in the sky, but the ground felt steady under my feet. The crew was strapped away on the starboard, and a few wounded men laid on shredded fabric from the sail on the ground. Only the Captain stood away from the group, her wrists and ankles bound to the railing as the Windwalkers ransacked her ship around her.
She made eye contact with us as we crossed the deck. Maybe it was just my imagination, but it seemed as if she rolled her eyes as we approached.
“We came to rescue you,” I said flatly.
Warren’s father turned to us, his arms out as if in warm welcoming. “The raven girl has returned.”
Jay shot me a faint grin.
“It’s not funny,” I replied.
“My son was supposed to bring you here, but I saw him leaving in an escape raft just moments ago,” the Windwalker said. “Where did my boy go?”