Break the Chains

by Megan E. O'Keefe

  “My preferences are not in play here. Though I have small freedoms other inmates do not, you can see my hands are tied. I do as my empire bids me.”

  “As do their whitecoats. And I’ve seen the gleam of passion in their eyes. Do you not love your work as they do, no matter the form it takes?”

  “Do not compare me to those perversions!” He slapped a hand against his desk. “Do I love to practice science? Yes, of course. I am full of questions only experimentation may answer. But science is neutral – it does nothing but raise questions. How one goes about collecting those answers is a function only of human folly and evil. Or, in my case, imperial threat. You should know something of the business of asking difficult questions, Miss Leshe. Or were your efforts to steal information always humane?”

  She winced. “Once, to save a great many people…”

  “Then you know the nature of this burden. If I were given freedom to investigate these questions of mental alacrity as I saw fit, then I would use only free and informed volunteers, not addicts desperate for their next fix. But the empire binds me. And even still, I have caught and accidentally murdered a great many rats to be certain I was not poisoning anyone.”

  “I am offering you that freedom, Nouli. Will you take it?”

  Nouli looked up from his work, a sheen of hunger in his eyes so profound it made Ripka jerk back in her seat. “My dear, I will take anything that gets me off this cursed rock. The empress has promised me release upon my success. If you have come bearing a better offer, I suggest you make it now.”

  Was this worth the risk? If Nouli turned on them now, much more would be lost than a chance to out-strategize Thratia. He and Kanaea could twist their connections to keep Ripka and Enard on the Remnant indefinitely. Could even prepare to capture Detan, when he came for them. Could hand any information Nouli managed to weasel out of them straight to the empress.

  But they’d come this far, and had been lucky enough to find the old engineer somewhat sound of mind, if drifting in moral compass.

  “If you agree to assist Dame Honding in defense of her city, I can return you to the Scorched before the monsoons come.”

  Nouli sucked his teeth; Kisser let out a low hiss.

  “You can’t be serious,” Kisser said.

  “I am. Arrangements have been made. I will share no more information, for obvious reasons. Know that I am serious. That I have implanted myself within these walls for the singular purpose of extricating you. Hond Steading requires your expertise. Will you give it?”

  He licked his lips, a fresh gleam in his eye – something beyond hunger to be free, something so profound it brought dampness to his eyes, filling his slightly rheumy orbs with a soft, glimmering sheen. “If you can free me, Miss Leshe, I will be forever in your debt. Yours and your friend’s, if he is indeed involved.”

  “He is.”

  “But monsoon season is coming now.” Kisser cocked her head to one side as if she could smell the approaching rains. “How can you promise this?”

  “No details.” Ripka allowed herself a small smile at Kisser’s scowl over hearing her words thrown back at her. “Just be ready to flee at any moment, to jump when I say so and ask no questions. And–” she swallowed, knowing she took a risk pushing her luck, “–be prepared to leave this nonsense behind.” She jerked her chin to the clearsky distillation system.

  Nouli wrung his hands in the towel slung over his shoulder, gaze darting between his work and the metal mesh over his window – that sliver of freedom. “You will have work for me in Hond Steading? I will not be left idle?”

  “Better work, more suited to your talents. Not this twisted dabbling.”

  “My mind...” he protested.

  “You will be allowed to continue pursuit of a cure, and to make what you need to keep yourself lucid in the meantime. But only for yourself.”

  “That is acceptable,” he said, nodding slowly.

  “Uncle, please, we cannot trust her.”

  “Hush, girl. You require only that I be prepared to flee when the time comes? There is no other task of me? Nothing that could compromise my position here if your promises turn out to be little more than hot air masquerading as selium?”

  “There is one thing. Warden Baset has set me the task of sussing out the source of clearsky here on the island, and I am certain I’m not the only one. If you were to be thrown into tighter security – or executed – before rescue arrives, then that would throw a spanner in things, wouldn’t it? Can you cease production for a while? Claim illness, or the requirement of deeper research to your masters?”

  “Hmm.” He dragged his fingers through the tangled whiskers of his scraggly grey beard. “I could, for a short time, but there is the trouble of my supplies.”

  “Supplies?”

  “Guards loyal to the empress slip in the raw ingredients I need for my experiments and collect my letters to the empress. One such transaction is scheduled to occur tomorrow evening.”

  Ripka rubbed her temples with her thumbs. “Why this shielding from Baset? Why does the empress not want him in on your doings? Surely wider distribution through the warden himself would allow you greater success in your... research.”

  “Indeed. But she is not entirely satisfied with Baset’s loyalty. She fears that booze-bloated old man is taking bribes from powers growing within the Scorched. Paranoid, no doubt. The empress is forever seeing daggers in her shadow. But, nevertheless, we have been sworn to keep our activities secret from the warden, lest he sell off my research to another bidder.”

  “Very well,” Ripka said as she rose to her feet. She ached all over, but held her head high, her back straight. She needed her body language, her tone and her words, to all work together. To convince these two that she was in charge. That she alone knew the right path to take.

  It was just too pits-cursed bad she hadn’t a clue what the best course of action was.

  “If I may make a suggestion,” Enard said as he rose alongside her. She inclined her head to him. “If the supply exchange must be made tomorrow, then allow us to make it. We will claim the Lady Kanaea has taken ill, and Master Bern is too busy tending to her to make the meeting himself. Surely with some parchment from you confirming the fact – they know your handwriting, yes? – there will not be too much trouble.”

  Nouli snorted. “And what would a couple of petty thieves know about making clandestine exchanges, hmm?”

  Kisser actually laughed – a sharp, abrupt sound, as if she were trying to keep it back and choked on it instead. “Tall, dark, and useful here has the background to handle it. Valet for the Glasseaters, were you?”

  He bowed a touch from the waist. “Something like that, lady.”

  “You’d never know by looking at him,” Nouli said.

  Ripka gave Enard the side-eye. “I believe that’s the point.”

  “Indeed,” Enard said, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, the only sign he’d had yet to show of being uncomfortable in talk of his long ago past.

  “I’ll give you this chance, Miss Leshe.” Nouli flicked a wrist at them in dismissal. “If you botch even the smallest detail, you will have no agreement from me, understand? I cannot put my freedom, nor my neck, in the hands of an incompetent.”

  “I understand, Master Bern.”

  “Excellent. Allow Kanaea to see you back to your cells, she will debrief you on what is required along the way. I will have a letter sent to you by the midday meal – beg off sick for the morning shift, if you can.”

  Ripka thought of Kisser pretending stomach pangs the first time she’d shared a meal with the rest of the women and suppressed a smile. So that had been a meeting day, too. How often were they, truly? That had only been two days ago.

  “Anything else?” Kisser asked, brows raised as she peeled herself off the wall and angled toward the door.

  “Just one thing,” Ripka mused, trailing her toward the exit. “Could you please inform Misol that there’s no need to keep spying on
me? I find her rather unsettling.”

  Kisser blinked at her. “Who?”

  “Misol... The guard who minds the yellowhouse.”

  Kisser rolled a shoulder and swung open the door. “Never been there. Don’t know what her trouble is. Come along now, we already strained our time frame and our guard escort is going to have his knackers wound right up his rear.”

  Ripka trailed Kisser out, scarcely listening to what the woman said as she briefed Enard on the arrangements for the exchange.

  The yellowhouse had nothing to do with Nouli. With the clearsky.

  So then, who was Misol? And what in the sweet skies were they doing out there?

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Detan grabbed Pelkaia’s arm, saw Tibs do likewise for Coss, and ran like the fiery pits were opening up beneath him. He watched in fascinated horror as the realization of what Pelkaia was washed over the gathered watchers, watched the initial tinges of revulsion fade away to shock and anger.

  It was easy to hate a thing once you’d learned to fear it.

  “Make way!” Detan screamed, because he figured that was at least worth a shot. Watchers spent their lives listening for an authoritative bellow and, sure enough, a few stepped clear of his path on instinct, bafflement overriding fear, anger, and duty. He could have laughed – if it wouldn’t have meant making himself vulnerable to do so.

  Pelkaia wrested from his grip and slipped sideways, skimming past the reaching arms of a nearby watcher. Shock passed. They closed in upon the fleeing five, a wall of blue cutting off Detan’s view of the dock – and the Larkspur – beyond.

  “Hullo,” Detan said, waving his fingertips with overwrought glee at the watcher who stood before him. He took a nervous step backward and his back thumped into Pelkaia. They’d been corralled into a sour little knot in the center of the room. Closer to the exit than they’d been when they’d started, sure, but as far as Detan was concerned that dock was as close to him as the Valathean isles were.

  “Now, now,” he spoke as if coaxing a startled child, patting the air before him with his hands, and let himself babble to give himself time to think. “I’m sure we can talk this through. There’s no need to send a perfectly good sel-sensitive to their death, now is there? She’ll be no menace to society all locked away on the Remnant, as a proper prisoner of the Fleet.”

  “The Fleet!” The watch-captain spearheaded his way through the nervous cluster. A dusting of spittle speckled his whiskers. “You really expect me to believe you’re sands-cursed Fleeties after that? Run! I heard you clear as the skies are blue.”

  “I think you’ll find the skies are quite black at the moment,” he rambled, peering through gaps in the ring of watchers. Someone moved on the dock – Pelkaia’s people? He had to keep the watchers talking long enough for Jeffin and his yokels to realize something had gone amiss.

  “To the pits with the color of the sky! You and your gaggle of… of ... Who are you people?”

  “I believe,” Laella cut in, “we have already been introduced.” She’d had time enough to calm herself and smooth her features back into something like the hard, authoritative mask she’d worn when she’d first walked through the door. Maybe she’d be good at this sort of thing someday after all.

  “Are you challenging my commodore?” Detan threw in, just to snap the watch-captain’s head back to him. He hadn’t a clue if that sort of attitude was something a real Fleetie would put on, but it didn’t matter. He had to keep the captain confused, keep him talking. Keep him from giving the order to clap them all in chains.

  “Will you be silent!” the captain snapped at Detan and jerked his attention back to Laella. The girl stood straighter, thrusting her shoulders back as she crossed her arms over her ribs.

  “You are in no position to give orders to my men. I apologize that this one overreacted; many would do the same in the face of such a creature.”

  The captain snorted. “Commodore Eradin of the Mirror, is it? We’ll see. You’ll all have to wait until we can get word back from Valathea confirming your identities. Men.” He snapped his fingers twice in the air. “Show the ‘Fleeties’ to their new rooms on the top level, and secure that ship of theirs. Throw the doppel and her associate in a new cell until we can arrange an execution.”

  “This is unconscionable!” Laella stomped her foot in typical spoiled-aristocrat fashion and jabbed the captain in the chest with her finger. The watchers hesitated. Every soul on the Scorched knew not to move a muscle when an uppercrust was busy throwing a fit. Fits had a way of latching on to the slightest of movements. “You will not make me get caught in the monsoon!”

  Outside, the sky gave a grumble of thunder as if to punctuate her point.

  “Miss, if this is a misunderstanding, then I apologize. But we’ve gone beyond your schedule.”

  The watchers stepped toward their huddled group, reaching for batons and shackles alike. Sweat itched between Detan’s shoulder blades. He couldn’t think of a thing to say. At least, nothing that’d do any more good than getting him cuffed for speaking. He shuffled back as the watcher he’d waved to reached for his arm, pressing his back tight against Pelkaia’s.

  A strange keening echoed from the direction of the dock, a mournful wail that sounded far away – as if his ears were stuffed with cotton.

  Behind him, Pelkaia murmured, “Finally.”

  The doors to the dock burst inward on a mighty blast of wind, the keening growing and swelling until it was an all-out banshee wail. Detan flinched, ducking down as the front of the storm slammed into the gathered watchers. He shivered as he sensed the source of that wind.

  Wasn’t wind at all, that gust blowing the doors so wide they cracked their frames. A wave of selium washed over him, around him. He had a chance to take a breath before it enfolded him, filling every crevice. An unseen sensitive shifted the gas back to its natural hue. It glimmered and flashed like someone had taken an opal and turned it to smoke.

  The selium displaced the air around them, fogged their eyes and tingled in their nostrils. Someone screamed, then a whole lotta someones were screaming. The first needles of panic probed at Detan’s nerves and he shivered, ducking his head, as if he could cower away from the glittering shroud that wrapped him tip to toe.

  Someone grabbed his wrist and he lashed out, panicked. His other wrist was grabbed and he stared into Tibs’s calm, weathered face, saw the rangy bastard’s lips moving but couldn’t hear a word he was saying over the keening in his ears.

  Tibs. Tibs is here and the watchers aren’t grabbing me and this is our rescue and it’s going to be all right just run – just fucking run.

  He nodded to Tibs, letting him know his panic had settled, and parted his lips to find he could breathe. Whoever controlled the sel that covered them had pulled back, switched from an all-consuming front of fog to a whip-like storm. Lashes of brilliance tore through the air, separating the watchers from their prisoners, stirring up real wind and scattering the light.

  The watchtower’s oil lamps blinked out, one by one, leaving only the gleam of sel, beautiful in its endless anger. Detan reached out a hand, entranced by the shattered and coalescing rainbows flowing around him. He’d never seen it like this before, never seen it so whipped up and… and not free, not exactly – but he sensed a delight in it. As if, in this wild storm, it could release a little of its anger, a little of its frustration at being tamed – at not being allowed to rise up and up and kiss the sun.

  Could the sel feel? He wondered, trailing fingers through a wisp that turned carnelian and malachite and broke across his skin in waves of topaz. Did it know what it was to be tamed?

  Did it hate being caged like he did?

  Did it want him to free it, even if it meant its destruction?

  Tibs yanked Detan’s wrists and he stumbled, remembering where he was, remembering he needed to run. He’d done a lot of that – of running. He was good at it. Better than he probably had a right to be.

  Severed from communi
on with the selium, he ran through it without a thought. Wisps brushed against his clothes and skin as he plowed straight through. Watchers shied away from those ribbons as if they were poison, calling amongst themselves various words of reorganization. He heard, as if from a distance, the captain’s whistle give its futile toots, trying to rally them against their terror.

  Hopeless, really. Detan doubted the poor sods had ever seen selium up close, unless it was contained within the banal leather of buoyancy sacks. This was something beyond their ken, something out of old fairytales. Detan wouldn’t be surprised if the poor launderers had an extra basket of watchers’ trousers to clean tomorrow morning.

  He staggered out the door after Tibs, broke through the storm of sel onto the strangely peaceful dock, bathed in plain moonlight instead of the restless, thrashing prism of selium.

  The Larkspur reared before him, as glorious in its sleek lines as it had been that first night, so long ago, when it had loomed in the embracing arms of Thratia’s dock. A fresh love for it swelled within him, choked him briefly. Tibs stalled as well, his eyes wide as if he were trying to drink in every glorious line of her.

  On her smooth deck Jeffin stood, surrounded by a half dozen other sensitives Detan did not know, sweat sheening all their faces, dampening their tunics so that they plastered across their shoulders and chests. Every last drop of the selium used to disguise the Larkspur’s iconic beauty had been stripped away, manhandled by her small crew to disorient Pelkaia’s captors.

  A jolt of awe startled Detan. A small part of his mind worked the cost of all that precious gas, and what it would sell for on the black market, even as he marveled at the ship itself.

  Pelkaia cuffed him on the back of the head. He jolted, spun around to tell her off, then noticed the watchers spilling onto the dock. A scant handful had mastered their fear long enough to break through the storm, but there would be more. With a grunt he sprinted toward the Larkspur’s gangplank, dragging a startled Tibs along behind him. They scrambled up together, fell panting side by side in a heap of silky-smooth ropes piled up against a cabin wall.