As She Ascends

by Jodi Meadows

  Maybe. No guarantees.

  Gerel caught my eye as she followed. “Good luck, Fancy.”

  No promise to try to calm Chenda down, or make her see reason about Altan. No reassurance that the six of us were stronger together.

  They were gone.

  And I didn’t go after them.

  DARKNESS WASHED OVER our cabin. The only light came from the porthole, pushed open just enough to let a light breeze whisper through. Rain pounded on the ship’s hull, tapping against the glass. Waves crested and crashed below; sometimes they were strong enough that a faint mist of seawater sprayed inside. But no one closed the porthole all the way.

  I’d been awake for an hour, running every word of the argument through my head again. Every tone. Every gesture. Not even LaLa—who was sleeping on my chest and meeping softly—could calm the punishing spiral of thoughts. I should have said we’d look at the black ship with them. I should have compromised.

  But how could I agree to working with Altan? He was an irredeemable monster who hurt people because it made him feel powerful.

  Ilina’s voice came from the hammock below mine. “I’m sorry, Mira.”

  “It’s not your fault.”

  “That’s debatable, but nice of you to say anyway.”

  Lightning flared, illuminating the porthole. A heartbeat later, thunder clapped and the ship shuddered under the assault of sound. LaLa growled in her sleep, readjusting so her good wing covered her head completely.

  From the hammock next to mine, Aaru watched her with an amused expression. When he offered a hand to me, I took it. ::How do you feel?::

  ::Not good.:: I wished I had something better to tell him, but that was the truth. My body still felt heavy and weak from everything that happened in the theater, and now my heart hurt from the fight with Chenda. ::Walk helped. A little.::

  He nodded. ::When One comes in the morning, tell him you will clean.::

  ::All right.:: Scrubbing the ship from bow to stern was the last thing I wanted to do, but if the walk had helped, maybe cleaning would, too.

  ::We will practice with a noorestone, too.::

  ::Are you sure?:: Given what happened today, practicing tomorrow seemed like a terrible and dangerous idea. Especially since we were on a ship; there was nowhere to escape to if something went wrong.

  He nodded. ::One noorestone. Not seven hundred. I will silence if you need.::

  ::Thank you.::

  ::Allies help each other.:: He paused, his eyes searching mine in the darkness. ::Friends do too.::

  As if helping me learn to use this power was the only thing I was thanking him for. As if he hadn’t been my strength through silence these last six decans. ::I wish I could help you like you help me.::

  He brushed his thumb over my knuckles, the softest caress, and the sweetest of imaginary kisses. ::You do.::

  LATER, I DREAMED of flying.

  Of great wings and burning stars.

  Of fire and screams.

  Of power untold.

  AARU

  Two Years Ago

  THINGS WERE GETTING BETTER. MORE STABLE.

  I’d found a job. Not one I liked, but it paid seven chips a decan. For five days, I collected trash off the streets and took it to a sorting point; the other five days, I collected manure from fields and took it to become fertilizer.

  Mother said Idris was finished sending her children, so that left us with me, Korinah, Alya, Hafeez, Danyal, and Essa—and Safa, and as far as I knew, there’d been no more bubbles of silence; she was safe. She made our family complete.

  Things were better. At least, I thought they were.

  “KORINAH NEEDS TO get married.”

  Father’s voice was muffled through his bedroom door. I’d just gotten home from work—streets today—and was about to change clothes, but those words stopped me by their door. I held myself perfectly still, and silent.

  “She’s thirteen.” Mother said it not like a plea, but a fact.

  “I know. It wouldn’t be right away, but we need to start making arrangements.”

  A note of tension edged Mother’s voice. “We can’t afford a dowry.”

  “Still, you should begin looking for a strong match. With Aaru’s income, we might be able to afford the dowry by the time she’s fifteen.”

  Silence.

  I imagined there was tapping—pieces of the conversation I couldn’t hear.

  “Why not Aaru? He’s oldest.”

  I hated that Mother would give me up so easily, but she was right. I was oldest, and I’d do anything necessary to care for my family.

  “We need his income. He won’t be able to take a wealthy wife—not with his job—and any dowry her family might be able to pay would be minuscule. It wouldn’t make up for the lost income.” Father was, of course, practical.

  “If only the Silent Brothers had taken him,” Mother sighed.

  The man who’d come when I was four had returned a few years ago, this time to test Danyal. But he’d left by himself again, which meant the Silent Brothers didn’t send Father seventy-five chips a decan, and my family couldn’t do without my income.

  “It’s marriage for Korinah,” Father said, “or Safa needs to return to Nazil. There isn’t enough money coming in to feed and clothe all the people in this house.”

  “You know how Nazil treats Safa.”

  “I know.” He sounded genuinely sad.

  If they talked more, it was in quiet code. But I knew what I had to do.

  WHEN I WENT to work the next morning, I asked my overseer to double my shifts.

  Korinah’s arrangements were not spoken of again, and Safa was not sent away.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  THREE DAYS IN NUMBERS:

  1.Three mornings of honey-drizzled biscuits and hot tea for breakfast.

  2.Twelve (total) hours of scrubbing various parts of the ship: rails and masts and decks and cabins.

  3.Twenty instances of crewmen hollering for me to get out of their way. (All on day one. After that, I learned better.)

  4.One three-hour-long discussion in our cabin about our plans and goals in Crescent Prominence, and what we might do after.

  5.Four hours of learning how to tie seven kinds of knots, as well as their usages. (I wasn’t clear on why I had to learn this, but Captain Pentoba said it was imperative.)

  6.Exercise sessions . . . without Gerel. Still, I knew what she would tell me to do: one hundred and fifty push-ups, eleven failed attempts at handstands, three hundred squats, and five different kinds of stretches. I performed these every morning and every night, with my friends’ encouragement and my own internal argument with an absent ex-warrior.

  7.Two evenings in our cabin with Aaru and me teaching Ilina and Hristo the quiet code. Determined to stay with our group and help, he thought it might be wise to be able to communicate secretly and beyond a notepad and pencil.

  8.Six hours alone in a cargo hold with Aaru, at the very bottom of the ship. Just us and a single noorestone sitting between our folded legs. Just the stillness of our solitude. Just the glow of light on his face, his hands resting on his knees, and the careful way he sometimes touched my fingers for the quiet code—as though I couldn’t read it just as easily as when he tapped the floor.

  I liked it, though. That attention. That care. That gentleness.

  It was during the last hour of our practice that we came within sight of Crescent Prominence, but I couldn’t see it from below.

  The practice was going well, at least with a single noorestone. There was only one thing I wouldn’t try—not with Aaru—and that was transferring the noorestone’s inner fire to something—or someone—else. Altan had tortured him with three noorestones treated with some sort of liquid, pushing heat into Aaru until the fever almost killed him.

  I’d done something similar to Altan when I’d stabbed him that last day in the Pit.

  But even without that, there’d been plenty to work on.

  I absorbed and expelled s
ips of power from the noorestone, making it dim in time with my breath, or with my heartbeat. When I touched the stone, I didn’t have to draw power at all; contact was enough to affect its light. I could brighten the stone as well, which would probably shorten its life, but most noorestones lasted for two or three centuries, anyway, and they were plentiful across the Fallen Isles.

  When I finished the exercises Aaru had set before me, I placed the stone on the floor and grinned up at him, triumphant.

  ::Good work.:: His smile was the sun. The stars. His smile was a rare and wondrous treat that sent my heart fluttering. ::Should we go up?::

  I didn’t want to. Over our three days at sea, the horrible fog that had taken hold of me after the theater was finally beginning to burn off. But it seared away in patches, and I could never tell when I was about to walk into a wall of emptiness. When I got comfortable somewhere, it liked to creep back in.

  Mostly, I faced it in the mornings, when rolling out of my hammock was the hardest thing in the world.

  But the scrubbing and stretching and strengthening had helped. I had more good moments than bad. And even though it was too many noorestones that had caused my lassitude, these moments in the bowels of the ship were among the best.

  I forced myself to stand, scooping up the noorestone on my way. Shadows jumped and caught on crates, but these were natural shadows, not like Chenda’s.

  Aaru touched my arm. ::Mira.::

  His expression was soft as he gazed down at me, and when I brought the noorestone between us, light glimmered over the planes of his face, the curve of his lips.

  I didn’t think.

  I let my forefinger brush against the stubble on his jaw. The strong line of his brow. And the swell of his lower lip.

  His gasp was sharp. Sudden. And for ten thousand pounding heartbeats, I wondered if I’d broken something.

  But when he breathed again, his smile was warm and soft. And when he moved again, his hand slipped down my arm and came to rest on my waist. On my hip.

  “May I?” I kept my words below a whisper, just a hint of a question only he would ever hear.

  His fingers curled over my hip, and he nodded.

  In the soft light of our noorestone, my fingers breezed across his forehead, over his temple and ear, and down the back of his neck. I stayed butterfly light, ready to stop if he asked, but he made no such suggestion. He just closed his eyes and soundlessly breathed my name, his body swaying close to mine.

  I loved him.

  I loved him.

  The words would be so easy to say. Hadn’t I said them all my life? To family. To friends. To crowds of strangers. So why did my voice refuse to work when it came to Aaru?

  Because this would be different—a declaration of something huge, and something I couldn’t take back. Something he could not ignore.

  Or maybe accept.

  He’d delayed his return to Idris—for me, yes—but he would go eventually. Definitely sooner than I wanted. He intended to build a life there. I couldn’t steal that future. Love could not be that selfish.

  Reluctantly, I stepped back.

  His hand fell from my hip.

  The noorestone shone between us, illuminating the heavy way he breathed and the confusion in his eyes.

  “I’m sorry.” My voice was deep with wanting. “I know it’s different for you.”

  A question shone in the tilt of his head, in the posture of his shoulders. His eyebrows moved in and his lips parted, silently asking.

  “On Idris.” My heart pounded in that anxious way it did when I knew I’d wronged someone. When I would give anything to make it right, but I didn’t know how. And now, my mouth fell open and words dropped out. “You don’t touch like that on Idris. Or kiss. Or—” I shook my head, definitely not thinking of anything else. “It’s sinful to do any of those things without being married, right? And I want you to know that I respect that, Aaru. I do. Damina says that all our beliefs are different, but showing love—real love—means respecting others’ beliefs and not forcing them to change to yours. And yes, there are a lot of reasons I don’t trust people on Damina right now, but I still trust my gods. I still believe in their wisdom. After all, they’re the god and goddess of love. Shouldn’t they know about all kinds of love? So I want you to know that. I do respect you and your beliefs, even if what I did just now doesn’t show that. I was thoughtless, giving in to what I wanted, and I’m sorry.”

  Aaru had withdrawn a step, probably at the onslaught of all my words.

  Just another way I’d offended him.

  Talking too much.

  He probably should have left for Idris when he had the chance. Why had he come with me?

  He was just being nice. Kind. Thoughtful. He wanted to repay me for helping him out of the Pit, because that’s the sort of person he was.

  And I was selfish, desperately wanting it to mean something more. Desperately wanting him.

  His eyes darted toward the noorestone in my fist.

  Light leaked between my clutched fingers, pulsing with my heart. My skin was dark and black against the bright glow of the noorestone, and the faceted edges cut against my palm.

  I dropped it—the noorestone. I let it bounce across the floor, away from me.

  I could still feel it, of course. I could feel all the noorestones on the Chance Encounter. One large stone—the very heart of the ship—propelling us closer to Crescent Prominence. One hundred and fourteen regular-sized stones in sconces on the three full decks. And another twenty in the captain’s quarters and the forecastle bunks. Eight were stashed away in the four lifeboats.

  And one in here.

  It skidded to a stop just next to Aaru’s feet. He bent to retrieve it, cradling the stone rather than gripping it. The light that shone was steady now, illuminating his face and the uncertain expression he wore.

  We were standing just next to the main hatch, beside a ladder connecting the floor to the closed door. The main mast drilled through the ship to my left.

  Noorestone still cupped in one hand, Aaru stepped to the mast—one, two, three steps—and tapped the quiet code against the wood.

  ::Is that what you think—::

  I started nodding.

  ::—of me?::

  I stopped.

  ::Of::—he hesitated—::us?::

  “I don’t know what you mean.” Us as in him and me? Or Idrisi people? Or something else entirely?

  But before either of us could clarify, the hatch groaned open and Ilina called in from above. “We’re approaching Crescent Prominence.”

  I managed to squash the shaking in my voice before it showed. “We’ll be right up.”

  “Don’t dawdle. I’m leaving the hatch open, so if anyone falls in, it’s your fault.” Then she was gone, her shoes thumping on the rungs of the ladder that led to the second deck.

  Aaru was still looking at me, a mix of emotions playing across his face. They all vanished the moment he realized I was looking back at him, his face as silent as his voice.

  “I’m sorry,” I said again.

  ::We should go up.::

  Aaru went first, climbing all the way to the main deck without stopping or glancing back. He moved without sound. His steps. His breathing. He was soundless, hiding even from me.

  Cool night air brushed my face when I reached the main deck, easing the heat of the humiliation I’d ignited below.

  Aaru already stood with Ilina and Hristo on the foredeck. I hurried to join them, making sure to keep out of the way of crewmen working the lines.

  We’d sailed around the southern reaches of Damyan and Darina—what looked like their feet from a map’s view. And now, we approached the capital from the south.

  “There’s the sanctuary.” Ilina pointed westward, where immense mountains rose in stark silhouette against the star-burnished sky. “See the ridge that looks like a dragon wing?”

  Aaru nodded.

  “That’s where a Drakontos titanus lives. Lived, rather. Before. She w
as on the list of dragons to be shipped east. It’s a terrible thing for any of the dragons to be taken away, but especially a Drakontos titanus. We think there are fewer than three hundred left on the Fallen Isles. Only about half of them live in sanctuaries.” Ilina glanced over her shoulder when I reached them. “What’s wrong?”

  Nothing was obviously a lie, so I just said, “I don’t want to talk about it right now,” and leaned on the rail next to her.

  She frowned, but didn’t push. “Well”—she pointed toward the sanctuary again—“you can almost see the ruins. Sometimes the little dragons play around them.”

  I scanned the foothills and flat land that stretched from the Skyfell Mountains to the sea, squinting until I saw a speck of light in the dark sanctuary.

  The empty sky was so strange here. No dragons in flight. No playful calls. No scent of lightning on the breeze.

  “There’s the old port,” Ilina went on, motioning toward a trio of docks stretching into a small harbor. “It was absorbed into the sanctuary when we began getting more dragons. Most of the structures were removed, but the sanctuary staff maintains a few boats and ships.”

  She glanced at me, sadness hanging deep in her eyes. That old port was probably where our dragons had been shipped away from Damina.

  “Up there is where Mira lives.” Ilina’s voice was rough as she pointed north, toward the series of high prominences that were splayed out like a seven-fingered hand. The middle was the longest and the highest, with the surrounding fingers growing shorter and lower. “It doesn’t look natural at all. Not with the prominences that symmetrical. There are scholars who think that an ancient species of cliff-dwelling dragons spent decades carving the structure before humans arrived on the Fallen Isles.”

  ::Beautiful,:: Aaru tapped, though I couldn’t tell if Ilina or Hristo understood.

  “When I was little,” Ilina went on, “it seemed like there might be something magical hidden in the spaces between them. But it’s just water. Sea caves. Birds. Emergency evacuation boats. A few small dragons. Drakontos raptuses make their nests in cliffs.”