Break the Chains

by Megan E. O'Keefe

  Of home.

  Every step forward he wanted to dig his heels in and refuse. But he was committed, there was no turning back even if he did lose his nerve. When the guard leading them down the path flung open the house’s door, he’d like to think he didn’t flinch. He did, of course, but he’d like to think he didn’t.

  The faint light in the room wouldn’t let him see what he was walking into, so he strode in blind, keeping his head up and a stupid, hopefully disarming smile plastered on his face as he followed Pelkaia-Thratia into the dim room. Light bled across the floor from poorly pulled shutters, illuminating floating dust motes.

  His eyes adjusted. His smile disappeared.

  “My my,” Aella said, cocking her small head to the side as she regarded Pelkaia. “What an unexpected delight, commodore.” The slight emphasis she placed on “commodore” made Detan’s blood run cold. She knew. Of course she knew. And she could dash the facade away, if she so chose. The crook of his elbow burned from her nearness.

  Tension gathered in the room, knotted and clotted up just like his anger did when it was preparing to rear its head. He saw the withered creature huddled by Aella’s side, wine carafe clutched in skeletal fingers. Saw New Chum, standing alongside some woman with a spear, face a mass of placid geniality. Saw Ripka, skies bless her, standing between him and Aella, her bruised fists held low, a golden-haired woman with a knife at her side looking just as ready to fight. But no Nouli. Not yet. Ripka’s mouth moved. She thought better of whatever she’d been going to say and closed it.

  He ignored their bruises. Their bloodied lips and black eyes. The filth and blood staining their jumpsuits. If he didn’t... Well, it was just better that he saved that information to give due consideration later. When there wasn’t a vaporous cloud calling his name above his head.

  “Right,” he said and clapped his hands together, donning his smile like a mask. “It is such a pleasure to see what a lovely young woman you’ve grown into, Aella! Though I must confess I do not believe white becomes you.”

  He strolled round the room as he spoke, drawing everyone’s eyes, trying to keep them looking, guessing, trying to figure out how he was going to salvage this mess.

  “And you, Callia.” He paused before the withered woman, pointedly ignoring the thin silver chain hanging from a collar around her neck. A perverse shock of pleasure rocked him, made his smile genuine. “You look as lovely without as you are within.”

  “Enough.” Aella’s voice lacked the snap of her predecessor’s, but her exasperation was just as cutting. “Misol, secure the building.”

  The lanky woman with the spear shot Pelkaia-Thratia a wary glance, but shrugged and angled for a doorway. Going for assistance, Detan realized. Going to gather up all her sister spears and hem them in with pointy edges. Pelkaia’s fists clenched and unclenched at her sides, a hatred deeper than anything Detan’d ever felt burning bright behind her borrowed eyes.

  He had Ripka, New Chum, Pelkaia, and Coss. Tibs, too, could be handy with a wrench if pressed to it. Aella was outnumbered now. She wouldn’t be again. There would be no other opportunity.

  “You are such a thoughtful host.” Detan sidled up to Callia and took the wine carafe from her trembling fingers. With a flourish he plucked a cup from the neat desk and began to pour.

  “Tell me,” he said, keeping his gaze on Aella, not daring to look at either Ripka or New Chum lest he give away his intent. “Do you have my package?”

  “I can collect it in a moment,” Ripka answered, crisp and efficient, while Aella’s eyebrows knotted in confusion.

  Ah. Well then. What she needed was a distraction. He was good at those. It was cleaning up the mess afterward that’d always proved his problem.

  “Be a dear and fetch it, hmm?”

  He dashed the cup of wine in Aella’s smug little face.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  A good plan, Detan had taught her, functioned on three founding principles: it must be followed, it must be trusted, and it must be thrown straight out the window when it inevitably goes to the pits.

  She ran like her ass was on fire, only vaguely aware of the shouts behind her. Detan knew what he was doing. He must. She just had to get Nouli. If he proved reluctant, then she’d knock him on the head and drag him out. If Kisser was in her way, she’d knock her on the head and drag her out, too.

  She brushed past the woman who must be Pelkaia, skin crawling all the same as she touched the likeness of Thratia. Honey darted in front of her, blonde mop of hair glowing in the sunlight as she flung the door open. The three of them spilled out into the breezy day, the weather cool and pleasant and bright, cheerfully ignorant of all Ripka’s plans evaporating before her eyes. Her heels skidded in the dirt outside the yellowhouse’s door. Enard grabbed her arm, steadying her.

  His expression was calm, controlled. Willing to do whatever needed doing next. Would have made her a fine deputy, had circumstances turned out very differently.

  “What now?” he asked.

  Shouts and clangs and grunts sounded behind her. She pretended not to notice. Detan had given her a task. She knew how to perform her duty.

  “We need Nouli.”

  “Kisser’s uncle?” Honey asked.

  “You know him?”

  She toyed with the ends of her hair, gaze tracking some sea bird as if it were the most fascinating thing in all the world. She was bored, Ripka realized. Bored and looking for some new challenge – or more than likely for someone new to kill. “Met him once. Don’t know where he is.”

  Ripka eyed the path back to the prison, laying a map in her mind over what she saw. They weren’t far from where Nouli’s workshop should be, but then, there was no telling what would happen if they re-entered those hallways. They could get lost. They could be captured. And while Honey was itching for another bloodbath, Ripka had no stomach for it.

  Enard cleared his throat.

  “I’m thinking,” she snapped.

  “Had you, perhaps, considered the grate against the wall?” His tone was gentle, but still held a rebuke. She’d been too tangled up in the strange doors and labyrinthine pathways. She’d let the complexity of the situation blind her, when the solution was so simple. Nouli’s venting window had been covered with a grate, a rather obvious addition to any stone wall. They just had to find it.

  “Clockwise or counter?” she asked.

  “I’ve always been fond of widdershins.” Enard grinned down at her, his sweat-slicked hair swooped over to one side. She would have chuckled if she weren’t so very aware of the shouts of battle behind her.

  “Let’s go.”

  They cut across the fields, ignoring the possibility of detection from above. Things were moving too quickly, and she could hear hints of the riot raging within the prison’s choking arms. The guards would, hopefully, be too busy to pay the fields any mind. And if they weren’t – well, Honey was more than willing to deal with them.

  Each time they passed a window that could not be Nouli’s, a lump of dread hardened in Ripka’s heart. How long had they been away from the yellowhouse, from whatever nightmare battle raged within? She had no doubt that Pelkaia could handle herself in a fight, and that lackey of hers had stood with the stance of one who’d seen one too many rows, but Detan and Tibs weren’t prepared for this. She wondered how much sel Aella had tucked away in that house, and just how angry and scared Detan might actually be, and forced herself to move faster.

  “Captain,” Enard said from somewhere behind her, the question in his voice strained by lack of breath. She paused halfway up a hill, and was shocked to realize how far ahead she’d run. Enard and Honey approached the base of the hill, their faces red from exertion.

  “What?” she asked, voice thready from lack of air.

  “Look around.”

  The hill she stood atop was one of a handful arranged to form a narrow valley in the fields. There was nothing natural about their placement. The humps were too regular, the spacing almost perfect.
And while the contents of the valley could not be seen from anywhere below the hills – and what inmate ever had reason to climb them? – the crop was obvious to her now. Hip-high shrubs laden with dark, black-brown leaves bowed in the wind, the sun making their glossy foliage gleam like an oil slick. Though the valley funneled most of the wind out toward the sea, Ripka could scent the sun-warmed leaves. The sticky tar aroma of mudleaf.

  So here was Radu’s cash crop, carefully tended alongside the food crops. She had never been so desirous of a flint to strike in all her life.

  “Oh,” was all Honey said as she came to stand alongside her.

  As the scent of the mudleaf plants wafted up to her, Ripka recalled with sudden clarity the faint aroma of mudleaf in Nouli’s laboratory, and she choked back a laugh. Of course he wasn’t a user of that rival drug. He’d never risk slowing his already damaged mind. No, he’d just had his workshop placed near the one place the fewest inmates on the Remnant would be allowed to go.

  She scanned the wall with renewed intent, and there, near enough to the end of the row of hills that it was nearly covered by the mounded soil, gleamed a faint hint of metal.

  “Gotcha,” she said, grinning, and jogged down the side of the hill, struggling to keep her jelly-tired knees under control. Just a little while longer, and then she could throw herself down to rest on the deck of the Larkspur. They were so, so close.

  Brown-black smears of sticky nectar clung to her arms and legs as she waded through the rows of mudleaf shrub. She hesitated before the grate, breathing deep of the sea-damp air, waiting to be sure she caught no hint of the poisons Nouli brewed within wafting out at her. When she was certain the vent was clear, she felt along the edge of the grate, fingers dragging over the rough metal, until she found the hook that held it in place. Shoddy workmanship, but all the better for her purposes.

  With Enard’s help she levered the grate free and threw it to the dirt, then peered carefully within. The room was faintly lit, the ruddy glow of cheap beeswax candles behind dusty glass the only source of light in the room.

  “Nouli?” she whispered.

  A soft rattling echoed from within. Nouli’s head appeared above his table, his face sallow and pinched with worry and suspicion.

  “Captain, is it? Thought you buggered off with my supplies.”

  “Our task was betrayed, I’m afraid. To the Glasseaters.”

  Nouli hissed through his teeth, darting an uneasy glance at the door. “You’d better come in.”

  “Can’t you come out?”

  He glanced pointedly at the window, then at the width of his chest, and Ripka sighed. There was no way he could squeeze through. They’d have to take him out through the prison proper, and that meant risking detection.

  “Honey,” she said as she levered herself up to crawl through the window. “You don’t have to help us with this. You could sneak back into general pop, maybe even all the way to your cell–”

  “I’m coming,” she said, and though her voice was as soft as always there was no room for argument in it.

  After what felt like a good half-mark of cursing and squeezing and scraping, they were all three through the vent, forming a half-circle around Nouli and his cluttered table.

  “We must go now,” Ripka insisted. Nouli clutched a satchel bulging with papers tight to his chest.

  “My niece...”

  “We were sold out to the Glasseaters. Kanaea Bern is the only one who could have done this.” She hated to cut to the point so, but there was no time for this. They had to flee, now.

  “She wouldn’t!”

  “Unless it was you, there is no other possibility.”

  He sucked his lips and shifted his weight, then pushed his spectacles up his nose and nodded to himself. “I do not like it, but I believe you. She has been acting... strange... lately. I fear she is more and more her father’s child every day. A gambler, that one. Obsessed with risk. I see no other solution to the evidence before us.”

  Ripka sighed with relief. It was a pleasure to convince a mind as loving of evidence as her own. “Good. Do you know any shorter paths out of this place? We must avoid detection at all costs, and make it to the sparrow’s nest, where our escape ship is docked.”

  Nouli barked a frantic laugh. “Impossible. There are less used ways, but with the prison in chaos there’s no way to know where the guards will be. Never mind any rabid inmates running amok.”

  Ripka forced herself to relax her jaw. “Very well. Then we will do our best. Be quick and be quiet, do not speak unless–”

  The workshop door flung open. Silhouetted in the brighter light of well-tended oil lanterns stood Kisser, flanked by two tough looking men who wore guard’s uniforms. Ripka reached instinctively for her cutlass, cursed and grabbed for one of the crates Nouli used for chairs instead.

  “You two,” Kisser said, “are terrible at dying.” She advanced into the small room, thugs in tow.

  Chapter Forty

  “Hold them.” Aella ordered no one in particular as she wiped wine from her eyes with the back of her wrist. Detan danced back a step and waved the clay jug through the air as if it were as deadly as a sword. Aella snorted.

  “Try not to embarrass yourself too much, Honding.”

  “Bit late for that, don’t you think?”

  “Was too late before we ever met.”

  Tibs chuckled.

  “Traitor,” Detan said

  “She’s not wrong.”

  “Honding.” Pelkaia’s voice cut through his rising mood like the Larkspur’s prow through a storm, and he winced. Wonderful. In one stupid word – never mind that it was his name – she’d encapsulated all her annoyance, all her questioning. Though he kept his gaze snapped on Aella he could practically see Pelkaia with her arms crossed, foot tapping out an impatient staccato as she waited for him to come up with some way to fix this. He looked at the wine carafe, at the maroon dribble snaking down its side, and tried to ignore the sound of nice military boots stomping through the halls, surrounding them.

  “Err.”

  “As entertaining as you are, I’m afraid I’ve rather had enough of this.” Aella tipped her chin toward the doorway behind her, and through it spilled a half-dozen guards looking like they’d had their lunch interrupted. One even had a smear of oil and vinegar at the corner of her lips. Didn’t hamper her ability to point a crossbow at him, however.

  Despite her obedience, the salad eater looked a touch confused. She squinted at Pelkaia-Thratia. “Begging your pardon, mistress, but the commodore...?”

  “Oh, that.” Aella held out a hand and clenched a fist. Detan felt nothing, he had his sel sense reined in tight, but Pelkaia staggered to one side. Coss barely got a hand out in time to hold her upright, and her face melted clear off, leaving the sand-dune cheeks she’d been born with.

  “There. That’s better. Now, say hello to our latest additions,” Aella said, and there was a soft muttering amongst her people.

  “Don’t look keen on it,” the woman with the spear said.

  “Are you still here, Misol? Go and collect the other two,” Aella said.

  Misol rolled her eyes and strolled out the door. Detan found himself wishing he could tag along with her. “If it pleases you, Aella, I’d be happy to retrieve my wayward companions–”

  “You’re not getting out of my sight. Nor you and your friend, Pelkaia.”

  “Who is this girl?” Coss asked.

  “Just another collector.” Aella flashed Coss a smile.

  “Enslaver, is more like it,” Pelkaia’s voice was a soft growl. “Did you come here for Ripka’s list as well?”

  Detan and Tibs exchanged a nervous glance. In all the commotion, he’d forgotten to let Pelkaia know that Ripka harbored no such thing.

  Aella’s brows shot up. “List? Never mind – I will discover the truth of that soon enough. If you must know, I’m here looking for our ilk.”

  As Aella’s six guards spread out, Detan shifted his weight and cas
t a glance at Tibs, who only shrugged. No ideas there, either. The room was small, the door behind him of average size, but the windows were quite large, if partially shuttered. His mind raced, grasping for a solution while Pelkaia and Aella postured like overfeathered cockerels.

  “In a prison?” Pelkaia scoffed. “It suits you.”

  Aella’s smile was small and coy. “You’d be amazed how many deviants find themselves on the wrong side of imperial law without being caught out for what they are. Most have more tact than you, after all.”

  He let the truth of Aella’s words settle in his bones and cringed. Their six new friends were deviants, then, and he had no particular way to know their type. Despite Pelkaia’s assurances that his line was rare, he could be surrounded by six people just as jumpy and prone to making things go boom as he was. He didn’t even like being surrounded by himself at any given time.

  And there was that blanket of sel, hiding away the whole of the house. So close, drifting above... Beads of sweat crested his brow, memories of how elated he’d been in Aransa when he’d finally let loose. At how calm he’d been in the days after, his anger burnt up with the boiling of the sky.

  “You really don’t want me in here right now.” He angled himself straight at Aella, stared at her until the strength of his gaze made her look away from Pelkaia.

  She rolled her eyes. “You are no challenge for me.”

  Emptiness washed over him like a shroud, and for a moment he felt bereft, desolate. And then positively cheery, a refreshing weight off his shoulders. A shudder of relief stretched through him. His arm didn’t even itch anymore. “Oh, that’s nice.”

  “Do be quiet.”

  “Never been very good at that.”

  “I am aware.”

  Pelkaia’s hand darted out, gathering the selium that had escaped her face in one outstretched hand. Aella scowled, and Detan’s awareness of the cloud above all their heads came crashing back as Pelkaia’s globule floated free once more. He staggered, nausea threatening to rise. Tibs grabbed his shoulder to hold him steady.