Iron Tide Rising

by Carrie Ryan

  He was omitting that he himself had started the fire, but that wasn’t really relevant. Because for once, Marrill understood what the wizard was trying to say. For everything that had happened, for all that history, for everything that made the Pirate Stream unique—none of it mattered anymore. All things ended the same, in the iron world.

  Unconsciously, one of her hands slipped down to her pocket, tracing the sharp edge of the mirror shard. The broken piece of her perfect future, where her mother was safe and healthy and grown to a great old age.

  Up ahead, the trail of smoke billowed high into the sky. Not everything would end in iron, she told herself.

  Some fires, it seemed, would burn forever.

  CHAPTER 16

  Finding Friends in the Worst Places

  In the past, traveling on the Stream had always been an adventure to Fin. But in the time of iron, it was drudgery. Below, no hint of life existed. No grasses swayed, no waves crashed, not even a breeze stirred. The only view was of destruction, an overwhelming reminder of just how much was at stake. It was hard to even know how much time had passed, as there was little difference between night and day here. Just a dim and a glow in the eternal dusk.

  Onboard the Enterprising Kraken, the crew was growing restless. The Naysayer hunched at the stern, glaring into the distance and grumbling about there not being any water to fish in. Remy slumped by the wheel, letting the Ropebone Man steer. Minutes trudged into hours, with no means of telling one from the next.

  And then, finally, Marrill perked up from her perch on the bow and pointed. “I think I see it!”

  Fin’s mood jumped from bored to lively to tense. Up ahead, cast iron mountains scraped at the sky. At the heart of the range, five peaks towered above the rest, arrayed like the prongs of a savage crown. Smoke billowed from the tallest among them.

  The world around the peaks danced in red light and shadow. Deep valleys that had never seen the sun were lit from within by waterfalls of molten metal pouring down from the high cliffs. Red-yellow rivers of flame sliced through sheer canyons, meandering out onto the plain beyond. Each peak was a volcano, somehow both dead and erupting all at the same time.

  Fin felt his shoulders tighten at the thought of confronting Vell. Though it was the thought of having to ask for his help that made his stomach truly turn sour.

  He didn’t have much hope that Vell would willingly help them. He’d spent the trip trying to come up with a plan to persuade him, but so far he was drawing a blank.

  Fin was about to suggest that they forget it. Then he saw the first of what looked like strange trees, scattered amid the smelted rivers that oozed across the flat plain. He squinted. They were too small to be trees, he realized.

  “Remy,” he called. “Take us lower.”

  The Kraken swooped down, low enough for him to confirm his suspicion. He was right. They weren’t trees. They were statues.

  First, it was a man fleeing, glancing over his shoulder at whatever chased him. Then a woman, sheltering a child. Then more, and more. The closer the Kraken drew to the mountains, the more dense the statues grew, until they were all Fin could see.

  Beside him, Marrill sucked in a breath. “They must have been running from the Tide,” she murmured. “Those poor people.” She turned from the railing, unable to look anymore.

  Fin nodded mutely. But unlike her, he couldn’t bring himself to tear his eyes away. Something about their frozen motions, something about their strides and postures, was all too familiar to him. These were not just random villagers escaping the Iron Tide.

  His pulse ticked up, his insides twisting. A few moments later, the fleeing crowd gave way to columns of iron soldiers, all of them standing straight with their chins high, keeping rank. Their expressions, frozen forever in masks of metal, showed no fear or hesitation. No sadness or regret. No weakness at all.

  “The Rise,” he breathed.

  His eyes skimmed back to the statues fleeing across the plain, and his stomach sank. The Fade. It had to be. As the creeping iron had taken them, their Rise had become vulnerable, and they too succumbed to the Tide. Just like with Fig and her Rise, Karu.

  He searched the Fade faces, wondering if in the possibility this world had once represented, Fig might be among them somewhere. If she might have been a nameless Sister Fade who’d never met him, never been given a name, never realized her strength and value.

  “I’m sorry, Fin,” Marrill said softly. “I mean, we knew it had to have happened, but it can’t be easy seeing it.”

  Fin shook his head. “It’s fine,” he lied. His chest squeezed tight. His mind flew to all the things that could have been. His mother, the previous Crest of the Rise, had wanted to make the world a better place for the Fade. She’d told him that the Salt Sand King meant a chance to change things—a chance to make the Fade equals. He wondered if, somewhere in the Mirrorweb, there was a mirror that had shown that possibility.

  He wondered what the world could have been like if Vell hadn’t killed her. He wondered what it would have been like if he’d met her earlier. Or if the Master hadn’t unleashed the Salt Sand King and Fin himself could have led the Fade to complete their revolution against the Rise.

  All of that potential, all those possibilities were gone now. That was what the Iron Tide meant. That was what it took. The chance that things might be different. The chance that things might be better, someday.

  “You sure?” Marrill asked. Her hand fell on his back.

  He couldn’t look at her. It was one thing, he realized, to witness the destruction of the worlds he’d known. It was another thing entirely to see the people in them robbed of any chance to make their lives better. It was almost unbearable to witness. And if Marrill hadn’t stopped him from killing the Master earlier, it would already be over.

  The Stream would be safe again, possibilities restored once more.

  He shook her hand free. Resolve hardened in his chest, turning his tears to anger. Marrill looked hurt, but she said nothing. She just stepped away.

  He hated this feeling. Hated fighting with her. But he couldn’t spend his energy worrying about that. The frozen people on the plain were what mattered. They were why he needed to stop the Master of the Iron Ship. Regardless of the cost.

  Carefully, Remy guided the Kraken higher again as they neared the mountains. The spaces between the peaks were dark, lost in perpetual shadow, and twisty like a maze. The Kraken plunged into them as she made her way toward the crown of flaming peaks. Steel cliffs and cast iron canyons surrounded them.

  Fin was pretty sure he wasn’t the only one who felt a chill run down his spine as the Kraken floated through darkness. Fountainheads of molten metal cut red slashes through it. The temperature plunged, then rose again as they passed by.

  “Careful, Captain,” Serth warned from the main deck as they threaded the gap beneath a soaring arch of what had once been stone. His dark robes blended with the shadows, making his pale face look like a mask floating in midair. “One touch, and the Tide will take us, too.”

  Fin shook the anxiety from his thoughts, focusing on the task to come. He was about to face the kid who had murdered his—their—mother. The thought twisted inside him, sharp and sure as the jagged mountains, hot as the molten rivers that poured out from them. He had to be ready.

  Suddenly, Vell’s voice broke the stillness, echoing through the sheer canyons.

  “Welcome at last, Brother Fade!”

  Fin’s eyes jumped from cliff top to cliff top, hunting. He scoured the dark spots that could have been either caves or shadows. He couldn’t find his double anywhere.

  Marrill crossed her arms next to him, holding herself. “Where is he?”

  Fin shook his head. The jagged landscape made pinpointing the sound impossible. “Take us higher, Remy,” he urged.

  “Working on it,” she shot back. “This ship isn’t exactly designed to move up and down, you know.” The Ropebone Man creaked in agreement, the happy face drawn on his paper-plate
head bouncing sadly as he strained on the sails.

  “I’ve been wondering where you were,” Vell’s voice echoed from all around. “You had to be somewhere, or I would be a statue like the rest of our brothers and sisters.”

  Fin couldn’t help the anger that boiled up inside him. Before he could stop himself, he shouted, “Funny thing, blood—we were just starting to think you’d done the world a favor and turned into a statue anyway.”

  Vell’s laughter bounced around mountains, reverberated through gorges.

  Marrill shushed Fin quickly. “We need his help, remember?”

  Fin grunted. He wasn’t so sure this idea was worthwhile. “We can’t even find him,” he shot back.

  “He’s definitely above us,” Serth muttered. “But where…”

  They were just passing between the first of the five big peaks, into a great round bowl of cliffs and high domes. A torrent of white-yellow metal poured down the middle of it, forming a pool of liquid fire below. The biggest peak towered far overhead.

  There was nowhere to go but higher. The Kraken slowed to a halt, the rigging shifting in preparation. “This is going to take a minute,” Remy said. “We’re really not equipped to go straight up.”

  “Why have you come, Brother Fade?” Vell’s voice asked from somewhere above.

  Fin stepped forward, shouting to the air. “Oh, we’re just here to…” He stopped himself on the verge of saying something nasty. Marrill’s reminder floated in his head. “To…”

  Serth’s eyes flitted around the bowl, searching. “He is near. Keep him talking.”

  Fin swallowed, choking on the words even as they reached his mouth. He pushed them out in a single breath. “Wecamebecauseweneedyourhelp.”

  Marrill smiled at him. “Was that so hard?” she whispered. He nodded back forcefully.

  “My help?” Vell seemed to practically choke at the thought. “You came for my help?”

  Serth pointed one long finger. “There!”

  Fin’s eyes snapped to a scrap of barb-wire shrubs atop the cliffs. Almost as soon as he saw the figure there, Vell jumped. He twisted, jackknifed into a dive, and splashed straight into the pool of molten metal below.

  Beside him, Marrill gasped. Fin shot her a look. “Sorry,” she said. “I know, he’s invincible. But still.”

  Serth leaned out over the railing. “We’ve lost him again, it seems.”

  Fin moved to the other side of the deck. Hot air blew up from the pool, drawing beads of sweat out of his forehead. The molten metal was so bright that he could scarcely look at it for long, let alone find where Vell had disappeared.

  A tense moment passed as they hunted unsuccessfully for any sign of their quarry. Overhead, the rigging squealed, still reconfiguring itself.

  “So what now?” Remy asked from the ship’s wheel. She was looking at the peak towering above them. “The ship’s ready to go up. But now it kind of seems like we need to go down?”

  Fin scoured the boiling pool below. Maybe they should go down and get a closer look. Then again, Vell and Fin had an awful lot in common. And even though Vell hadn’t grown up in the Khaznot Quay, he knew how to climb—almost as well as Fin himself. In the time they spent searching, he could head back to the top of the cliffs again, maybe higher.

  “Come on, guys,” Remy pressed. “Which way?”

  Marrill spoke up quickly. “Rise!”

  “You got it,” Remy replied. The ship began to lift, hovering straight up.

  Fin shook his head, unsure. He gripped the railing tight, squinting at the cliffs above. “Do you see him?”

  “Rise!” Marrill said again.

  “I got it,” Remy snapped.

  Fin looked over. Marrill was leaning out of the bow of the ship, looking down. Something wasn’t right.

  “Marrill?”

  “Rise!” she cried again, stepping backward.

  As Marrill retreated, another figure moved up, slinging himself over the rail. His feet made a thump as they struck the deck. His whole body was a folded knife, ready to snap out and stab them at any moment.

  “Hello, Brother Fade,” Vell said coolly.

  CHAPTER 17

  The King of Molten Metal

  Marrill slow-walked backward across the deck. Vell, the heartless Crest of the Rise, rose to his full height before her. Behind him, the waterfall of melted iron highlighted his sharp figure. Then the waterfall and the cliffs surrounding it fell away as the Kraken lifted into the open sky.

  “So,” Vell said with a smirk. “You rabble have finally realized the superiority of the Rise and have come groveling for my mercy.”

  Marrill looked to Fin for help. He and Vell were the same person, after all, in a way. Even if they couldn’t possibly have been more different.

  But the smoldering anger in Fin’s eyes was far hotter than the melting metal below them. Whatever Fin might say, it would only get them in worse trouble.

  So she looked to Serth for help instead. He stood rod straight as ever, his face a demon mask in the forge light, his expression almost as arrogant as Vell’s own. Marrill had a quick flashback to his parley with the Meressians at Flight-of-Thorns. Diplomacy, she reminded herself, was not the wizard’s strong suit.

  Neither of them appeared willing to bend to the Crest in any way. But if that’s what it took to get his help, that’s what she would do. Swallowing, she stepped forward, clasping her hands together to hide her nerves. And to keep from taking a swing at Vell. He’d killed Fin’s mother, after all. Marrill didn’t take kindly to people who messed with her friends.

  “Um, yeah,” she said. “Something like that?”

  Vell nodded. “Good.” He turned, throwing his arms wide just as the Kraken burst through a haze of smoke that ringed the summit of the highest peak. “Then bow before the Salt Sand King!”

  Before them, the mountain summit jutted into the air. Atop it, cold and silent, stood the statue the Rise had carried to the siege of Flight-of-Thorns Citadel.

  For all his power and ambition, the Salt Sand King wasn’t a grandiose figure. He was small and hunched, his form wrapped in bandages so that the only things visible were his beak and glimpses of where his ember-like eyes would have been. Like his surroundings, every inch of him was covered in dark metal, utterly lifeless iron. But the ground beneath his statue glowed with a silent fire. Down below, somewhere deep inside the mountain, his heat must have been melting the metal, creating the burning rivers that poured into the valleys and lit the whole place like the inside of a forge.

  Marrill had a bad feeling about this. “So… if we bow, you’ll help us?” she asked. On either side, Serth and Fin scoffed.

  “I am not bowing,” they said simultaneously. Of course now would be the moment they took each other’s side.

  Vell turned back to them sharply. “Then you’ll die,” he said. He held out a hand. “Behold, he awakes!”

  As Marrill watched, the glow beneath the statue spread upward. Blue at first, then an orangish red. It infused the entire mountain peak, seeping into the statue itself. The metal around its beaked visage began to glimmer, a sheen glistening across its surface.

  Vell crossed his arms. “Are you so sure you won’t bow?”

  Marrill glanced toward Fin and Serth. Sure, it would be embarrassing. But if it got Vell to help them fight off the Master of the Iron Ship, what was a little embarrassment? “You will help, right?” she asked. “If we do?”

  Vell laughed. “Of course not. I am the Crest of the Rise. I give the commands. And none but my king commands me.”

  “Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me,” Fin spat.

  The mountain peak snapped and bubbled. A jet of flame shot out over them, its heat so fierce that it buffeted Marrill’s skin even from dozens of yards away. The Kraken was rising right into a full-blown inferno.

  Fortunately, Marrill thought, dullwood was fireproof. Unfortunately, they weren’t. “Uh, Remy?” she called. “You might want to put on the brakes.”

  �
��You know ships don’t have brakes, right?” Remy responded. “It’s called drift—we can’t just stop. Ropebone, quick, modify the rigging. We need to sail!”

  The ship came alive with movement—sails dropping, pirats scrambling, Ropebone screeching as they changed course. Serth muttered, his hands tracing invisible lines in front of him. The air cooled, but only slightly.

  “I am not… ready for this,” the wizard mumbled.

  The captain glowered but said nothing as she spun the wheel hard. The Kraken began to bank. But it wasn’t fast enough. The heat around the statue was so intense that it shimmered like water, turning the air into waves of glistening light. It was like staring into the base of a flame, colorless, with hints of blue flashing, giving way to a flickering yellow.

  That’s what the statue of the Salt Sand King was now, the heart of a flame that grew until its white tip snapped, whiplike, through the air. Two glowing embers appeared where his eyes would have been, piercing through the thin veneer of iron that still coated him.

  His beak cracked, tearing a ragged slash in the metal. “And what have you brought me, oh Crest of my Rise?” he asked, voice raspy from disuse. He raised a hand, the fire around him answering his beckoning call.

  Flames shot toward the Kraken, engulfing her in a burst of light. Fin threw his arms over his face. Remy was able to force the ship down, tilting them out of the worst of the attack, but the sails still caught the edges of it. Pirats scattered along the yards, using what they could to douse the small fires that broke out in the rigging.

  “Do you know how long I’ve been waiting?” the Salt Sand King bellowed. “My hunger growing, waiting for something to burn? Something to conquer?” He raised his arms, and the mountains around him almost seemed to bend at his command. Then Marrill realized they actually were softening, sinking, as if the molten valleys were swallowing them whole.

  “Uh-oh,” Marrill said under her breath.

  “What uh-oh?” Remy called from the wheel behind them, an edge of panic in her voice. “I can’t see anything from here. What uh-oh?”