Break the Chains

by Megan E. O'Keefe

  “Haven’t a clue what you’re on about. Captain wants us to put in here for her own reasons. Said to see you off, nice and quick, so if you don’t mind…?”

  Coss pointed toward the gangplank that sloped down to the roof of one of the large, square, brownstone buildings. The rest of the crew jostled back and forth across the ship, seeing to their tasks. Pelkaia had vanished.

  “Hold on now,” Detan said as Coss grabbed the cloth at the back of his neck and shoved him forward. “I demand to speak with your captain for being so rudely manhandled.”

  “I’m sure your treatment will break her heart.” Coss kept on herding Detan along, Tibs loping beside them with his hands stuffed in his pockets. “You’ll find your flier has been safely stowed at this fine dock, though how you’ll pay to get her back is your problem.”

  “This is absurd,” Detan protested, digging his heels in to slow the stocky man down. “Never mind Pelkaia’s thrice-cursed pride. I’m offering her real benefit, a trade of skill.”

  Coss hesitated, his grip loosened a touch. “Not my decision,” he said, and Detan suppressed a grin. Maybe it wasn’t Coss’s decision outright, but he’d bet his shoeless feet that the first mate had a healthy say in the dealings of the Larkspur.

  “Not to mention the–” He cut himself off, faking a nervous glance around for eavesdroppers, and whispered, “the list.”

  “What list?” Coss asked, voice pitched low though he kept on pushing Detan toward the slanted gangplank.

  “Of deviants, of course. Ones the empire’s got a sideways eye stuck on.”

  “You have this list?”

  “Personally? No. But I need Pelkaia’s help to free the woman who does.”

  Coss mulled that over, sucking on his teeth so hard his cheeks grew sunken. “Orders are orders,” he eventually said, but there was a hesitance there that gave Detan a small tingle. He doubted Pelkaia would get much peace from her first mate tonight.

  As they reached the gangplank, Coss gave him a final shove. Detan stumbled and nearly lost his footing on the rough slip of wood. With the plank groaning under their combined weight, Detan and Tibs hurried down to the dust-coated rooftop.

  A chill breeze washed over them, smelling of brine and something deeper, something loamy. Heat rose across his scarred back, the crew’s gazes boring into him as he disembarked. He spun around before taking the last step and saw them there, scattered across the deck and the rigging, not bothering to obscure their stares.

  Pelkaia stood at the helm, her long back straight as a mast pole, her hard stare pointed his direction. Ripka’s posture, he mused, and wondered how much of the watch-captain’s habits Pelkaia couldn’t shake from all that time she’d spent imitating her in Aransa. He gave her a cheery wave.

  “See you soon, Pelly!” he called, high and bright as he could, and was rewarded with a few nervous chuckles from her crew. And a certain finger raised in salute from Pelkaia.

  “Lovely,” Tibs muttered as they hopped down onto the roof.

  “Oh, pah. She’ll come around. I doubt that first mate of hers will give her much choice.”

  “And if she doesn’t?”

  Detan shrugged, surveying their new surroundings. The flier was tied up alongside the Larkspur, its rectangular deck and tubular buoyancy sack rather dinky in the shadow of the greater ship’s sleek hull. Detan looked twice at the Larkspur. The ship he knew he’d flown in on looked nothing like the ship he’d stolen in Aransa. Sure, the masts were the same, and the bowsprit featuring an angry air-serpent looked mighty familiar, but its body had changed. It looked flattened, plain. Like nothing more than an overgrown Valathean transport vessel.

  He whistled low in appreciation. When the ship had come rushing in to pluck him off the cliff’s edge, he hadn’t gotten a solid look at it, and he certainly hadn’t been able to see much better locked up in one of the cabins. Whoever Pelkaia had on board making the ship look boring, they were doing a mighty fine job. Clever, he thought, filing that trick away for later.

  Over the edge of the building, the streets bustled with locals going about their daily chores. Across the narrow lane, about three stories up, Detan spied an open window with a sign pinned above that read: Lotti’s Cards and Pleasures. Beige curtains had been pulled back to let the air in, and they twisted in the sea breeze. Loud whoops sounded from within, glasses clinked, and a handful of men in the crisp white shirts of the Valathean Fleet sat hunched around a table with fans of cards in their hands.

  “I think,” Detan said, slinging an arm around Tibs’s shoulders to point him toward the window, “we should go make some new friends, seek some new pleasures. What do you say?”

  Tibs eyed Detan’s bare feet and torn trousers. “I say we’d better get you dressed, first.” He wrinkled his nose. “And a bath wouldn’t go amiss.”

  Chapter Five

  Pelkaia leaned against the cabin’s exterior wall, watching Detan and Tibs make their way to a ladder at the roof’s edge, and breathed easy. She’d never been so relieved to be free of a passenger before. She caught herself drumming her fingers against her thigh and stopped. No matter what stories he told – possibly especially because of the stories he told – Detan wasn’t a soul she could trust, not like the rest of her well-vetted crew.

  Jeffin slunk up alongside her, the lanky man’s face sallow in the seashore sun. A tiara of sweat gleamed across his forehead, and the crescents beneath his eyes looked bruised and sunken. “Begging your pardon, captain, but should we shove off? I’m, ah, getting rather tired.”

  Glancing at the sun’s angle, Pelkaia clapped him on the back and nodded. “We’re going to put in here for the night. As soon as it gets full dark, drop your mirrors. In fact, you can try and pass them onto Laella, if you think she’s up for it.”

  A frown flitted across Jeffin’s already drawn face. He crossed his heart with the old Catari constellation for strength. His lineage was nearly as tangled in Catari blood as Pelkaia’s, though he seemed to harbor a deeper loyalty than she did. The man still said prayers to the stars every night, while Pelkaia was lucky if she remembered to cross her heart with the constellations once a week, no matter her full-blooded body.

  No matter her childhood in the dusty oases, hiding like stonerabbits in the badlands from the advance of the Valathean Fleet.

  “I’ll show her how,” Jeffin said. His voice sounded like it was tumbling out over hard stones. Forced as his helpfulness was, she was grateful for it, and she gave his shoulder a small squeeze. Valathean, Catari. They were all deviant selium sensitives. They were all outcasts, in their own way. She and Jeffin would just have to get used to the Valathean girl’s presence.

  Coss approached her, his slate-grey eyes bright and a strange tension in the tendons of his jaw.

  “Ho, captain,” he said, but there wasn’t as much affection in it as usual. Jeffin tucked his head to the first mate and, sensing Coss’s agitation as surely as Pelkaia did, scampered off in a rush to find Laella.

  “Ho, mate,” she said, drawing out the word “mate”. Coss rewarded her with a soft flush and shifted his weight.

  “May we talk in quarters?” he asked.

  Pelkaia surveyed her ship. Essi was up the ropes, getting a lesson from Old Ulder on proper knot-tying, and Jeffin had disappeared into the cabins to find Laella. The others lounged about, trading stories and drinks in Petrastad’s sea breeze. Watching them now, she could not help but imagine her son, Kel, amongst them. He had been a simple sel-sensitive, the kind the empire approved of. But even that had not been enough to keep him safe from the power struggles between Valathea and their once-commodore, Thratia. He’d died in Aransa for being a witness to Thratia’s treachery. Someday, with the help of this crew, she would balance those scales.

  The crew did not need her now, and so she nodded to Coss. “Spending time with the Honding that bad?”

  “Something like that,” Coss said and took off toward Pelkaia’s cabin.

  She followed, checking on her
ship with every step, but scarcely seeing a thing. What had gotten Coss so wound up? The man was a rock. Cheeky, sure, but stable in all weather. Seeing him tense as a harpoon spring made her heart ramp its pace.

  In the privacy of her cabin, with the door shut and the thick black curtains drawn against the light, he dropped all pretense of affability. He would never question her in front of the crew – they’d agreed to that – but she’d given him permission to be open with her in private. From the way his expression darkened, she wished she’d rethought that plan. Criticisms were always worse from Coss. Due to his deviation, he was the only one in the whole of the world who could see her true face hidden beneath her selium mask.

  “Why in the black skies didn’t you tell me Detan has access to a list of deviants?” he demanded.

  “Captain’s decision,” she said, knowing as soon as the words left her lips that they were the wrong thing to say.

  “Really? The fate of a whole fistful of deviants, and it’s just you who gets to decide? Thought we were all important on this ship. Thought we were partners.” He stepped forward as he said “we,” his body canting toward her, his tannic breath gusting against her cheek. She shifted backward, putting distance between them. Long ago, she’d decided neither one of them could afford to be distracted by the sly glances they stole at one another – nor by the comfort she took in knowing he was near.

  “This is exactly why I didn’t tell you. You’ve never worked with Honding before. He’ll play you, even as you’re playing him. Maybe there is a list, maybe there isn’t, but he wants something from me – from us – that I can’t see yet, and I’m not chasing his tail without a clearer picture of where we’re going.”

  “So you are considering it.”

  “I didn’t put down in Petrastad for the food. I docked us here to see what he does next, to see how desperate he is to get out to those isles.”

  “What isles?” he asked, quick enough to make Pelkaia snort a laugh. Of course Detan wouldn’t have explained the dangerous aspects of his supposed plan.

  “Didn’t he tell you the whole story while he turned you against me? I’m shocked he wasn’t more forthright. The woman with the whereabouts of that mythic list is a prisoner at the Remnant, as is her friend, and Detan expects me to swish on over there in the Mirror and pluck them out.”

  Coss folded his arms over his ribs and slouched, wary. “What’d this woman do to get locked up in a place like that?”

  “If Detan’s to be believed, she got caught stealing the list and hid it somewhere before being apprehended.”

  “She a deviant?”

  “Ripka Leshe, a deviant?” Pelkaia shook her head. “She’d knock you cold to hear you say it. That woman’s as banal as they come – and as straightlaced, too. That’s the only real believable part of Detan’s story. If Ripka was going to get herself locked up for anything, it’d be a good cause.”

  “And you’re willing to let a woman like that rot?”

  “Let? Clear skies, Coss, there’s little all I can do. This is the Remnant we’re talking about, the most secure prison in the whole Scorched. I wouldn’t know where to begin plucking her free, even if I wanted to. And regardless, it’s not me who got her locked up there.”

  “Real nice.” He snorted. “So just because it’s not your fault means it’s not your problem?”

  Her back stiffened and she picked her chin up. “What’s so wrong about that?”

  “What’s good about it?” He threw his hands in the air, grasping as if he could wring an answer from the emptiness. “I thought we were trying to change things – thought this crew was meant for bigger things than snatching sands-cursed deviants away from death at the final moment.”

  “And you think breaking someone out of the Remnant is worth risking this crew? You think trusting a thing Honding has to say is wise? Even if the list is real, there’s no telling what became of those on it. They could be captured already. We could be wasting a lot of time for nothing.”

  “Regardless of the list, I think saving a good woman from a wretched end is worth it, yes. And I think the crew would agree with me. Pits below, maybe you should ask the crew what they want to do about it. For once, give them a say in matters. They aren’t children. Well, all except Essi anyway, and she’s no innocent. And if that list is real, then there’s a chance–”

  “Stop.” She pinched the bridge of her nose between two fingers. “I agree with you, it’s just that...”

  “Pell.” Coss settled a hand against her upper arm and the warmth of him spread through her sleeve. She pushed his hand away. “You’re afraid to risk the crew.”

  “It’s not the crew I’m worried about. He’s stolen this ship once before. I wouldn’t put it past him to try again.”

  Coss shoved his hands in his pockets. “Stole it because you tricked him into it, unless there’s a piece of that story you’re not sharing. There are sixteen of us, and one of him. Two if you count Tibal. I think we can do it. I think we should at least try.”

  “We’re not ready for something like this. We’re not even properly armed if it comes to a fight.”

  An impish grin curled its way over Coss’s lips and he cocked his head to the side. “This is Petrastad, captain. We’ll put a watch on Honding, see what he does, and if his story checks out – well then. There are weapons to be had aplenty in this salty hole, and a man with his particular talent is well suited for recovering them.”

  Pelkaia picked her head up and met his eyes. A smile worked its way across her tired features. “You mean to rob the imperial weapons vault.”

  “I do. And what better man for the job than Detan Honding?”

  Chapter Six

  The cell door slammed open, startling Ripka out of a fretful doze. She jerked upright and squinted against the sunlight’s intrusion, her eyes watering. A flat-faced guard loomed in her doorway, tapping his foot.

  “Midday meal. Get up and get out, or don’t eat.”

  Though her joints were stiff, she forced herself to straighten and hurry to the opened door – but not too fast. The last thing she needed was another bruise to nurse.

  Apparently she hadn’t been alone in isolation throughout the morning meal. Her neighbors were being hauled out of their beds and shoved into an unsteady line along the balcony. Most sported hair mussed from too long abed and wrinkled jumpsuits. Newbies, all of them, their eyes wide and their postures uncertain and guarded.

  Enard – or Tender, as that man called him – faced straight out to the rec yard below, dark eyes squinted against the sun’s glare. She endeavored to catch his eye, but he ignored her existence. Blasted man owed her an explanation for his familiarity with the Remnant’s rougher crowd, and she was determined to wring it from him as soon as she could.

  The guards arrayed themselves at opposite ends of the balconies, with an additional guard in the center of each line. Ripka’s rude awakener was her row’s centerpoint, and she supposed his broad shoulders and twice-broken nose had something to do with that. Sticking the biggest, meanest-looking guard where everyone had an equal chance to get a good, long look at him was exactly what she’d do if she were in charge.

  Her chest surged with a twang of regret. No one would ever let her run a single jail cell, let alone a whole prison, ever again.

  “Turn right,” the big guard ordered without so much as a glance down the row.

  They turned and shuffled forward as one unit. The guard’s shadow projected over her shoulder, and he shifted his crossbow to keep it pointed at their backs. Lazy, she thought. Worse yet – dangerous. If the stupid man so much as stubbed his toe he risked accidentally discharging his weapon into his wards’ backs.

  More importantly, into her back.

  Sea mist left the stone balcony sticky beneath her thin shoes, the air chilled enough to rake goosebumps over her arms. They were ushered out into the rec yard, the narrow tables on which they’d had yesterday’s meal already laid out with plates, troughs, and mugs filled with
cold, fresh water. No time for a gruel line today.

  On the other side of the rec yard smaller tables hosted the established residents. Most gave the new arrivals a wary eye. As Ripka’s row marched by a lopsided table seating three women, every last one watched the procession. She nearly jumped out of her skin when the woman nearest her – a lean thing with a mess of dark pecan hair – let out a shrill whistle.

  “Hey, Hessan,” she crooned, wriggling a finger at the big man who’d opened Ripka’s door. “Bring the lil’ one in front of you over here. The fighty one.”

  Ripka’s skin itched, but she bit her tongue. The guard paused, letting a gap grow in the line, and leaned his crossbow against his shoulder, pointing it up at the sky. At least that was an improvement.

  “I don’t know, Clink. Still a sparrow, after all.”

  “Aww, c’mon, we’ll treat the lil’ bird real nice. And look, Kisser is out with the shits, we’re gonna need the extra hand today. Might as well get the girl acquainted, neh?”

  The guard let loose the long-suffering sigh of a man who’d had this argument before, and remembered just where it’d gotten him last time.

  “You rats rope her into any nasty business, and I’ll punch new holes in you.” He pat the crossbow. “Understand?”

  “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? New holes?” Clink leered.

  Hessan actually blushed. A seed of anger hardened in Ripka’s chest. Whoever managed training here was a nightmare. Prisoners shouldn’t be able to fluster a guard so easily. Shouldn’t be able to ask to have the rules broken, and be given what they wanted. If she had command of the Remnant, then Hessan would be out on his ass so fast–

  “Go on.” Hessan shoved her toward the women’s table. “Eat your meal. Don’t cause no trouble.”

  Ripka stumbled but caught herself, dropping into a grappling stance on instinct. She caught Enard’s gaze over Hessan’s shoulder, and though his eyes were wide with interest, he didn’t seem worried. He shrugged and mouthed, “Later.”