Break the Chains

by Megan E. O'Keefe

Enard whispered something in Oiler’s ear.

  “Stop,” Oiler said. His men obeyed.

  Oiler’s body trembled, his heels slowly dragging through the sand as he verged on losing whatever slim footing he held despite being bent over Enard’s knee like a human bridge. Sunlight glinted off bright rivulets of blood dripping from his cheek to the sand, turned his complexion a phantom shade of rose.

  “You may have lost track of me,” Enard said, voice raised for all on the beach to hear. “But I have not forgotten you. You in particular, Onrit.”

  He flinched. Enard smiled.

  “Yes, I know your name. Father made all his sons learn the fine details of each Glasseater’s life.” Enard scooped a handful of gravel from the beach and placed one black stone on Oiler’s cheek.

  “This,” he said, “is Marya. And this, Ledi.” A grey stone followed onto the other cheek. Ripka’s stomach sunk as tears mingled with the blood dripping from Oiler’s cheeks. She didn’t know who those names belonged to – but she knew what they meant to him. That was enough.

  “If you come for me, or for my friends, again, I will come for them. Not you. Them. Am I understood?”

  “Pits swallow you,” Oiler rasped.

  “Good.” Enard stood in one fluid movement, dropping Oiler to the wet sand. He pinned the other Glasseaters with his gaze, and flicked the remaining handful of sand toward them. “Do not think for a moment I will not gather the names the rest of you hold dear.”

  They did not disgrace themselves by running, but they helped a dazed Oiler to his feet and hurried back down the path all the same.

  Ripka felt as if she were witnessing something deeply private as Enard observed his old gang mates retreat up the crumbled slope. He seemed open to her, vulnerable in a way she couldn’t quite place. Marya. Ledi. How long had he carried those names on the off chance he would need them as weapons? How many more weighed him down? Alone on the beach with him, Hessan their only witness, she wondered if she were any safer now than before the Glasseaters had arrived.

  Enard shook himself and straightened his shoulders, the rigidity of his bearing chasing away his phantom grace. So that was how he’d hidden his talent for violence so long beneath her nose. Only then did he turn, and his brows shot up as he hurried toward her. She must have looked a mess, kissed all over with minor scrapes and cowering on the ground like some strange crab.

  “Are you all right, captain?” he asked. Despite her reservations, she felt the weight he lent to the word captain like a balm – it was no nickname for him. He believed in her old station, even if she had left it far behind.

  “It’s all surface,” she said as he helped her haul herself to her feet. She winced, examining the deep gouge left across the soft pad at the base of her thumb by the cord. “Well, except for that.” She gave her fingers an experimental wiggle and hissed through her teeth from the pain. Still movable, so nothing vital had been severed, but she’d hurt for weeks due to it – if not full moon turns – and the threat of it festering was quite real. The guard hadn’t struck her as the cleanest of folk.

  “And you?”

  Enard prodded his cheek and cringed. “A passing annoyance. Our brave escort?”

  Ripka smirked at the serious way he pronounced brave, and knelt beside Hessan. He lay on his side, groaning softly, hands limp against the ground. With care she felt around his head with her good hand and found a knot forming near the base of his skull. She sighed. He must have struck his head against a stone when he fell and, based upon his current incoherent state, she guessed a mild concussion had occurred. Pity, that, but he would live. She doubted they would have lived if she hadn’t gotten his whistle away from him.

  Shouts sounded nearby. Guards rushed haphazardly down the path, cutlasses and batons both wavering in their hands. Ripka shook her head in disappointment. If one were to trip, they could knock the whole pack down. Someone was bound to get stabbed in that scenario.

  “Step away!” A guard barked at her as he drew near. She frowned, thinking she recognized him, but all their faces were beginning to blur together for her. If she had had trouble keeping track of the individual members of her watch, she had no doubt Radu couldn’t name even half his staff.

  Raising her hands to show they were empty, save the whistle dangling from her wounded palm, she backed slowly from Hessan.

  “He has a slight concussion,” she explained. “I suggest you get him to the apothik. Correct teas will ease his disorientation.”

  “Be quiet.” The guard gestured a few of his colleagues towards her. Peacocks, all of them. She wondered if any were Kisser’s loyalists, and if they might have an idea of what Hessan was out here for.

  The guards took her and Enard roughly in hand, and she suffered a poorly done pat-down before her wrists and ankles were clasped in shackles. She cringed as the cold metal closed over the wrist of her injured palm, even that small jostling causing her some agony.

  “We were assaulted…” Some bastard cuffed her on the head.

  “I said be quiet,” the guard holding her bonds growled in her ear. “We can see well enough what you’ve done.”

  “I–” she took another thwack to the skull. Vision slewing, she blinked her sight clear. Enard stared straight at her. He gave a slight shake of the head, and she resigned herself to silence. They had allies to call upon, eventually, but these were not them. Whether they were Radu’s, or neutral in the Remnant’s power games, it was best to keep silent. He was right, though it grated at her. No explanation could smooth away the scene these guards had stumbled upon. No doubt they’d think she’d cut her hand trying to wrestle the whistle away from the fallen guard before he could call for assistance.

  It was, she realized bitterly, precisely the decision she would have come to under the circumstances. Her stomach dropped. Maybe these were Kisser’s allies, after all. Maybe she’d set them up.

  Captain Lankal picked his way down the path, his expression wrought with bright anger. He glanced to Enard, to Ripka. Took in the whole scene, and shook his head with disappointment. Ripka flinched, hanging her head despite herself.

  “Captain,” a guard said, and Ripka looked before she realized he was talking to Lankal. The guard held out the oilcloth pack, the top flipped open to reveal the contents. Pale, silvery grey bark in tight curls filled the interior. It was rather pretty, but Ripka could not place it. She doubted the source was native to the Scorched.

  “I see,” Lankal said, prodding at the contents with a finger. “Warden will want to see this.”

  The guard said, “This time of day, sir, the warden has meetings.”

  The way Lankal’s expression darkened, Ripka realized the only regular meetings Radu held were with a bottle. He evaluated the angle of the sun, and nodded. “And I bet they’ve already begun. Very well. Take those two to an apothik, then throw them in the well for the night. And if either of you struggle, I’ll have the other killed first. Clear?”

  “Yes, sir,” Ripka and Enard said in unison.

  The captain looked a little surprised by their obedience. He took his hat off, ran his fingers through greying hair, then glanced back at the sack of curled bark. Disgust twisted his mouth. He shoved his hat back on with purpose.

  Back up the unstable cliff side they were marched. Ripka’s thoughts struggled as she tried to figure out a way to explain what had happened to Radu.

  Whether Kisser had betrayed them or not, she required an explanation that would not, under any circumstances, reveal the presence of Nouli Bern.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  The Larkspur’s controls were familiar in his hands, the waxed wood stable and reassuring, just as it had been in the days after he’d first stolen the ship out from under Thratia’s nose. It’d be smooth sailing, if Pelkaia hadn’t gone and moved some of the rigging around. Blasted woman had a nasty habit of meddling with everything she touched.

  Detan eyed a suspiciously small wheel to the lower right of the primary wheel, dyed a bright cherr
y red, and wondered what would happen if he gave it a twist.

  “Best not,” Tibs said. The twerp wasn’t even looking Detan’s way. He’d stationed himself at the navigator’s podium, a smaller version of the captain’s, and had his head down to fiddle with some contraption or another.

  “How in the black did you–”

  “How couldn’t I?”

  Detan rolled his eyes and snapped his attention back to the task at hand, doing his level best to ignore that tempting little wheel. Someone had gone and dyed the wood a cherry stain, the bright color drawing his eye even as he focused on the yaw of the ship. Couldn’t see much of the horizon from the captain’s podium, not with clouds sealing them in, but Tibs was fitted up with periscopes and signal flags. Of course, the crew who was supposed to speak with the navigator in semaphore were currently occupied recovering a fortune’s worth of sel – so, really, he just had his periscopes.

  Which should pits well be enough. If Tibs could spot Detan sneaking a sweetcake off a cart at a hundred paces, he had better be able to spot any new threat sneaking up on them. Tibs was sometimes worse than a mother dogging his heels.

  “Mark course.” Detan popped out one of the chock pegs inset into the podium that were designed to brace the handles of the primary wheel.

  “Course?” Tibs’s voice ratcheted high. “You find me some stars, I’ll find you a course.”

  A cottony blanket of grey cloud scraped the sky above their sails, blotting out all hope of navigation. The soft glow of Petrastad’s lights smeared the horizon to their aft, and nothing but empty blackness yawned to their fore. Below, all around, the black silk of the sea stretched. Endless and, without the stroke of the moon’s light to give its sheen away, too easy by far to confuse with the horizon.

  He swallowed, realizing the nightmare they’d been pushed into. Out over the open water, in the middle of the night, with a storm coalescing all around them, horizon blindness could settle in quick.

  If he could get a drop of selium, he could let it go – watch it rise to be sure of their vertical axis – but all the ship’s excess was tied up in the illusion the Larkspur’s crew was struggling to recover. The buoyancy sacks in the ship’s belly should hold enough to keep them a touch above neutral, the ship’s ability to climb reliant upon its propellers and the angle of its stabilizing.

  If the watchers didn’t back off, give them time to gather themselves and orient properly, there was a very real chance Detan would accidentally steer them straight into the sea. And in his very limited experience, there was no charming one’s way out of a shark’s mouth. Or hypothermia, for that matter.

  “We’re fucked.”

  “The thought had occurred to me,” Tibs drawled.

  “Climbing,” Detan said, and reached down to crank the wheel that controlled the tilt of the lift propellers. He set it spinning, letting the masterful gear ratios do the heavy lifting for him, one hand on the wing’s wheel to keep them as close to level as possible.

  A narrow liquid level had been set into the top of the captain’s podium, the air bubble within gleaming up at him as he stared it down, keeping the thing right smack in the middle of the central lines. He couldn’t let the Larkspur yaw to one side or another – any subtle variation could set them on a course to the waves.

  “Mark weather,” Detan called back to Tibs, unwilling to peel his eyes from the level while they were ascending.

  “Fuckin’ soup.”

  Detan kept on climbing, sweat breaking across his brow as he stared down that bubble, not daring to breathe too hard lest he twitch the wings the wrong way. How high? If this ship had a barometer, he couldn’t see it, and Tibs wasn’t calling out the pressure as he would have if he’d had access to the right instruments. Wisps of cloud licked at his clothes, dampening him all over. Detan’s ears popped.

  “Tibs?”

  “Thinning.”

  Clear air washed over his back, brushing away the thick moisture of cloud cover as the Larkspur heaved itself atop a wooly blanket of grey cloud. He locked the lift wheel into place and the ship jerked as it nosed down, almost stalling into an aft-slide.

  He glanced up, expecting to see clear sky, but instead Pelkaia filled his view, her tired features pinched into a tight scowl. He’d have much rather come face to face with more nasty weather.

  “Get off my podium.”

  Detan snorted, straining as he held the wheel straight under the buffeting of higher altitude winds. “You can captain this ship when you’ve got all the sel back.” He called over his shoulder to Tibs, “Mark course already!”

  “Working on it,” Tibs’s voice was strained, made thready by the wind whipping past his lips.

  “This isn’t your ship, Honding. Step aside and help the others.”

  “By the pits, Pelkaia, you think I’m enjoying this? You ever flown into a sea storm before?”

  The twitch at the corner of her eye was the only answer he needed – no, she hadn’t. Detan straightened, firmed his resolve not to let her take control of the wheel. An inexperienced pilot in this mess could send them all splashing down. And he’d just replaced his boots, too. It’d be a shame to ruin them in the salt water.

  “I see you haven’t. Well, I have, and I’ll be damned if this is the right moment to teach you how to handle it. Thank your cursed stars I happened to be aboard, and go get your sel back. And don’t come bitching to me if we lose the watchers before you succeed. My goal is getting us out of this alive and free. I don’t care about your surplus.”

  Pelkaia opened her mouth to protest just as a gust struck the ship, throwing the mainsail hard to one side. Detan cursed and clutched at the wheel, bracing himself against the podium as he straightened the ship’s sideways slew.

  “You want to help? Get those sails down! And have everyone tie in. Things are gonna get rough.”

  She glared at him, but strode off anyway, her footsteps easy and comfortable over the bucking surface of the deck. Soon dark silhouettes moved across the deck, away from the aft where the struggle over the sel continued, spindly figures swinging up on the masts to bring the great sails down. He breathed a sigh of relief. One less thing to worry about.

  A black bolt skittered across the deck, nicking the heel of his fine new boots. He yelped, jumped forward enough to slam his chest into the wheel. The ship began to slide, but he straightened before the effect could be troublesome.

  “What in the black–”

  “Company to starboard,” Tibs said.

  The watchers’ craft had caught up, pacing the Larkspur’s rail. It was a low-bellied thing, narrow enough to cut through the sky just as quick as its propellers could force it along. Selium shimmered all around it, twisted into strange, knotted shapes as the sensitives on board the Larkspur struggled to wrench it away from the three sensitives Detan had seen fixing the craft when they’d first arrived. All along the deck a string of watchers spread out like links in a chain, at least eight of the bastards, with blackened crossbows pointed straight at the Larkspur’s deck. And there wasn’t a sensitive aboard the Larkspur willing to answer those crossbows with the ship’s harpoons so long as the sel remained in jeopardy.

  “You make a real nice target,” Tibs mused.

  Another bolt skittered across the deck near his feet. One thunked into the wood of the podium with a heavy twang. “Pits!” Detan hunched down in the three walls of the podium, struggling to keep his body hidden while still being able to exert enough leverage to work the great wheels.

  “They’ve got a harpoon!” one of Pelkaia’s crew yelled, voice sharp with panic above the howl of the storm-winds.

  “Hold on!” Detan called back, praying to the clear skies that Pelkaia had got his message across to everyone to tie themselves in. Huddled as he was, the wheel was a bear to turn, but turn it he did, groaning and growling as he heaved the wheel to the larboard. The sleek ship responded immediately, tearing away from the watchers’ vessel so quick Detan feared he’d roll them. Screams – mostl
y startled – popped up all around. He jerked the wheel straight and risked a glance over the top of the podium for the starboard side. The watcher craft was a good couple of hundred strides away, and although Pelkaia’s crew was scattered like thrown sand all across the deck, they appeared to all be there.

  “Whoo!” He grinned, popping up to his full height, and angled the ship for a gentler curve to take them away from the watcher craft. Soft, fat drops of rain began to pelt Detan’s head, running down his hair and into his eyes. The shadow of the watchers’ craft turned, following tight behind.

  A damp Pelkaia marched toward him, the rain making the sel on her face shimmer as it plowed riverbeds through her illusion. It gave the effect of her skin cracking, as if she were leaking selium from within. Detan shivered.

  “Blow it,” she demanded, thrusting a finger toward the watchers’ craft. Selium enveloped it – Pelkaia’s surplus.

  Hot sweat mingled with the cool rain on his neck. “No.”

  “No? No? Look at it! We’ve lost it. Blow the watchers, and we can reel in what’s left.”

  Detan squinted, shading his eyes to keep the rain clear. The amorphous blob of pearlescent gas twisted at the edges closest to the Larkspur, connected to the main blob around the watcher craft by thready wisps. His little stunt had gotten them out of harpoon range, but it’d been too sudden – half the crew had lost their hold.

  But he could still feel it, looming like the promise of a stiff drink in his mind.

  “So you lost it. So what? I told you–”

  “Sirra.” There was a warning note in Tibs’s voice so stern that both Detan and Pelkaia whipped around to look his way. “We’ve a problem.”

  Tibs pointed. Detan’s gut nearly emptied itself on his new shoes. A great column of cloud, grey and bulbous and churning, loomed on the horizon. It speared up from the sea like a god’s leg, its body crackled with streaks of lightning. The patchy clouds that spilt rain upon them reached out toward that swollen pillar, twisted into smears as they were pulled in under the force of the storm’s updraft.