Only Broken Things Are Free (A Pygmalion Fail Book 3)

by Casey Matthews

  The Valkyrie had gained altitude, giving them high ground on the Leviathan, so the zip-pipe dragged me upward.

  Something happened crossing that great chasm above the clouds. The air was thick with bolts and arrows, a hundred orcs bellowed at my back, but I was razor focused on just doing the next thing—on getting to the Valkyrie. The brief thrill of terror at leaping into the sky faded into background noise, leaving my brain fresh and clear to consider my next move. Danger hemmed me in from every side, but it no longer felt like pushing through mental quicksand; my limbs were no longer addled by looming death. Was I actually getting used to this stuff?

  Pain exploded in my shoulder. I felt the bolt’s impact in the bone and the numbed fingers on my right hand lurched from the pipe. The other hand followed suit and I fell…

  …about three feet before Dak snagged the scruff of my shirt from behind. It cinched beneath my armpits and we flew at the Valkyrie’s deck.

  Lightning burned my eyes and thunder tore through the air around us. The orcs must have trained a new cannon on us somehow. The bolt ripped apart our castor turret, transforming the armored front into shrapnel. The violet ribbon we rode winked out with fifteen feet to go.

  Dak tossed me at the rail. I arched over it, hitting the deck on my good shoulder.

  I rolled and saw his huge mitt gripping a support. He hauled himself over, rushing for me. “You okay?”

  It was cold, like an icicle jammed into my shoulder. “Yeah.”

  “No, you’re not.” He reached for me.

  I jerked away. “One thing first.”

  “Dude! There’s an arrow in your fucking back!”

  “One thing first!” I hollered in a voice used so rarely that Dak gave me space. Glancing over the rail at the Leviathan beneath us, I spotted the orcish corpses littering the deck around their castor turret. Tammagan had killed her way in and reversed polarity on the chain, dragging the rigged fire ship back into its flank.

  She got smaller and smaller as the Valkyrie pulled away.

  Elsie hit the rails beside us. “She’s still down there. Get that castor fixed! Send the Captain an anchor!”

  Our turret was slagged. Akarri were trying to pry a wounded woman from the twisted wreckage.

  Elsie wheeled in search of something. “I need a bow. I’ll hold off the orcs.” Horrified tears streamed down her face while she picked up a wounded Akarri’s weapon. “I’ll hold them off, and someone get the Captain a goddamn anchor!”

  Far below, an orc drove its sword into Tammagan’s ribs. She collapsed onto her side. I couldn’t hear her scream, but I saw how she tore its head half off with her return blow.

  My right hand trembled. I couldn’t draw and I was helpless.

  Six orcs advanced on Tammagan, who edged away from them while keeping her sword partly raised.

  An explosion tore from the fire ship’s back end, the concussive wave hitting my chest like a massive fist.

  “Captain!” Elsie cried, the anguish in her voice cutting through me.

  The orcs advancing on Tammagan had been blown apart, but from her prone position on deck, the parapet at ship’s edge had shielded the Captain from the worst of it. A surviving orc nonetheless bared his teeth in a snarl I couldn’t hear and came at her, relentless even as a chain of explosions splintered two masts on our fire ship.

  The idea hit me. Oh God. Could it even work? I pried my sketchpad loose before I could talk myself out of it, flipping to the sketched portrait that had created Tammagan. This could go so wrong. But she was dead otherwise.

  I blew on shaking fingertips and laid them on the sketch as though performing a distance pull, focusing on my creation.

  The orc readied to bury its axe in Tammagan’s head. The moored fire ship burst open, an explosion ripping it to splinters and rocking our vessel, opening the Leviathan as though some god’s axe had cloven its flank. Yet I never took my eyes from the silver lines zipping through Tammagan’s form, still visible through the hail of shattered timber.

  The orc’s axe thunked into the wooden rail behind her and then the fire ship’s explosion obliterated him.

  She was gone.

  Pressure filled my skull, as though I’d dived into the deep end of a pool. It pushed through my bloody shoulder, rattling a scream from my throat, and then down my arm bones and to my fingertips, seeking the paper.

  Before it kicked free, before she could slip back into her portrait, I pointed those fingertips at the deck, where silver lines sliced the air. They zinged along orbits that mimicked her shape until the air popped and Tammagan hit the deck.

  She flinched in anticipation of an axe that never came, still clutching her wounded side.

  The fire ship erupted in one final, deafening boom. Risking a backward glance, I saw the Leviathan shatter along its spine. Interior struts bowed under strain and, with the tumultuous crackle of ten thousand planks, the ship’s front end snapped free and both halves listed vertical. Orcs scrabbled at the deck and dozens of them tumbled through the clouds like dark fleas shaken off a dog. At first, the Leviathan’s remains eased down through the clouds as if into an ocean. When the float stones on the front half gave out, it sank abruptly from view.

  Elsie gaped at me, then at Tammagan. She flew at the Captain and threw her arms around her, grappling tight, her whole body shaken by quiet sobs.

  Tammagan winced at the impact and then seemed to just accept it, wrapping one arm around her field officer. Realizing I’d transported her, she looked at me. “How?”

  The Queen glanced from Tammagan to me before noticing my sketchpad. “The wizard made her,” she breathed. “Unbelievable.”

  Horror transformed Tammagan’s face, though within a heartbeat it was replaced by outrage. “When?”

  “A long time ago,” I assured her.

  “Just what parts of me did you make?” she snarled.

  I gulped, the ache in my shoulder much worse now. “Uh. Your… hair. Your hair, sword,” and mumbling, I added, “some other things.”

  “You’re the one who fucked up my hair!” Looking ready to deck me, she struggled to her feet.

  Elsie stood with her, though, stroking her face. Glassy-eyed, she laughed—the sort of half-crying, giddy laugh that only comes with overwhelming relief. “I like your hair. I like how he drew you. I don’t care.”

  “But how would you feel—”

  “Hey.” Elsie put fingers to her jaw, redirecting the Captain’s gaze into her own eyes. “He did a really good job on you.”

  Tammagan’s face softened.

  Dak cleared his throat. “Let’s save this for after Band-Aid time.” Around us, Akarri unfurled the ship’s sails, tended the wounded, fought to get us away from the devastation. They’d pulled one woman from the castor-turret wreckage and she seemed alive, but her arm and face were blistered with burns.

  Quinny and Ronin led a small squad from below deck, all cleaning their weapons. “Cleared the orcs,” Quinny announced. Nodding at Dak, she added, “For the most part.” Then she noticed Tammagan and Elsie holding one another. “What’s this?” she demanded sharply.

  “How do I know you’re the real Tammagan, though?” Elsie asked, ignoring Quinny.

  “You remember disobeying my orders back there?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Almost choked you.”

  Elsie grinned wildly and looped her long arms around Tammagan’s neck. “Oh, Captain, it is you.”

  “But I’m glad I did this instead.” Tammagan kissed Elsie again, more gently now.

  Quinny’s jaw dropped. “The bloody hell!”

  Elsie, kissing, extended her middle finger to the tattooed Akarri.

  “Oh, fine!” shouted Quinny. “There it goes then, all sense of moral order. We’re just gonna do all the ruttin’ things they write about in porn books. You!” She pointed at Dak. “Might as well roger me now, ’cause that’s what it’s coming to.”

  “Hard pass.”

  “How is Isaac?” Ronin asked Dak.


  “The wound’s not deep. Think he’ll be fine. Take that from probably this world’s foremost expert on getting shot with crossbows.”

  “It feels like it went straight through,” I groaned.

  “I want pallets for the wounded,” Ronin ordered. “Get them below deck. Keep the rigging on our mainmast furled, the beam’s cracked. Make no mistake, we’re limping, and they’re sending reinforcements as we speak. We aren’t done yet.”

  I glanced weakly at the scorched fissure where lightning had struck our center mast. We were in bad shape and it didn’t seem safe to sail like this, but… what were our options?

  Well, there was one thing.

  I fished out my magitech computer, figuring I’d better just do it rather than ask. Ronin would never let me in my current state, and there wasn’t enough adrenaline in me to fight her on it. Casting had never physically harmed me before, so I figured I could do it wounded, provided no head injuries interfered with my concentration. Activating the computer stone, the last thing I’d worked on flashed into being in holographic form.

  Ronin growled. “What do you think you’re—”

  I exhaled on the image of the sky ship.

  Unnamable power pounded through my bones, forcing me to my knees. An electrical discharge crackled the air around us and I managed to barely lift the image of the new sky ship overhead. There was a tension in my soul, a tautness as summoned magic saturated my cells and filled me to bursting. Then a lurch. The power sprang free; it was out, gone into the world, and with a flash of lightning, a whirl of smoke, and a zinging of the familiar silver lines, a sky ship unlike any other manifested over us.

  I had only a moment to look up and admire it—then sweep my gaze across the group of slack-jawed Akarri—before the deck rushed up at me and everything went dark.

  Chapter Five: Bumping Uglies

  I woke with pain radiating from my shoulder to the base of my skull. A sweltering mattress pressed against my cheek and I was cognizant of movement in the room. “What’s—”

  “Easy.” Ronin’s voice, maskless and unscrambled. Sometimes I forgot how nice it was. That rasp brushed my senses in a way that soothed me. “I removed the bolt and packed your wound. Try not to move. Are you thirsty?”

  “Yeah.”

  She lifted a bowl to my lips and I drank while she filled me in: the new sky ship possessed a small medbay, thanks to Dak’s blueprints. Healing stones therein produced salves, poultices, and enchanted bandages that sped the regeneration of my shoulder. The supplies had likely saved the Akarri they’d pulled from the castor turret’s wreckage.

  We’d lost one. She’d died while zip-piping to the Valkyrie. A stray bolt of lightning had crossed her path and reduced her to ash, scattered her on the wind before the fighting had begun in earnest. My gut clenched, as the plan had been mine.

  Ronin insisted it was a sound one. Maybe that should have quieted my anxiety, but it didn’t. I was upset that I didn’t know the Akarri who’d died. Her name was Nell. She’d had glittery studs in the helix of her ear—that was the only thing I remembered about her.

  Our new sky ship could fly higher and faster than any other, but we’d gone off our original course to disguise the location of the Citadel of Light and to confuse scouts. There’d been no time to search for Leo, but the crash site was marked so I could one day return to find him—or his remains. A turtle like that deserved a memorial. Nell’s memorial came in the form of the ship itself, as they’d named it after her.

  I convalesced in Ronin’s bunk. She wanted me nearby—whether out of protective instinct, my war-asset status, or something more, I couldn’t tell. The drugs kept me in a stupor most of the time. We rarely spoke, but her presence at the edge of my awareness comforted me, and she was always there.

  Well, except for bathroom stuff. I’d have been mortified letting a girl I liked haul my narrow butt to the crapper. Dak took care of that; neither of us was squeamish, on account of his accident and my being on hand during his initial forays into living with partial paralysis. Needless to say, Dak’s experiences on the receiving end made him a hell of a nurse.

  I could move around by the third day, albeit at a cautious pace. Ronin started spending more time elsewhere on the Nell and in her mask. Kyra visited me, though, bringing gossip about the Captain and Elsie. Word about the ship insisted Elsie would turn in her field medallion, quit the Akarri, and rejoin the crew as a paid mercenary. Half insulated from the command structure, Tammagan would be free to ravish her on the regular.

  This relieved Kyra, who—while entirely at ease with Elsie’s sexuality—could not stand the impropriety of officers dating subordinates. I couldn’t disagree after hearing the way Kyra put it, but she still reminded me of a half-old-fashioned Republican mother who didn’t care how gay her kids were, so long as they promised her wedding vows and plenty of adopted grandbabies. Once the Queen signed off on the bureaucratic legerdemain, Kyra would finally relax.

  “I’ve dragged the details from Elsie,” Kyra said. “I made her swear that until the transfers go through, she and the Captain will stay strictly hands off. So that’s good. At least they’re not yet… doing anything.”

  “We’re doing everything,” Elsie assured me on her first visit, an hour later. “Everything I know how to do anyway, which is so much it’s actually a little sordid.” She hummed happily. “I read lots. That helps.”

  I hoped that holding my blushing face in my hands would cue her to stop.

  Not so. Elsie had apparently selected me as confidant, which was understandable given Kyra’s upper-class pretensions about screwing one’s captain. “And that woman is pent up,” Elsie went on. “Like whoa pent up. Like I get her going and just, y’know, hold onto the headboard for dear life. I mean, admitted, she’s still learning—has the sexual experience of a maiden priestess, that one.” She tapped her lip in thought. “Guess that explains the ‘pent up’ thing. And the temper. I’d be mad too if no one ever went to town on—”

  “Elsie. I don’t need every detail. Really.” The base part of me wanted every salacious crumb, but I was carrying latent guilt about what I’d witnessed as a ghost. “While liberating Dak’s iSword, I may have… already seen more than I should have.”

  She arched an eyebrow.

  I blurted the explanation, start to finish, steadily losing the ability to hold eye contact.

  Somehow she held a straight, serious face until I’d finished. Then: “Ha! Don’t tell Tammagan.”

  “No kidding.”

  “But mention it during our wedding toast. I’ll make sure she’s wearing crazy heels so she can’t catch you.”

  “One thing I like about you. You never lack confidence.”

  Eventually, Kyra and Elsie both segued into the same awkwardly shoehorned question, and somehow I was unprepared for it both times. They wanted to know if I’d drawn them. I assured both it wasn’t the case, and Kyra seemed relieved. Elsie managed to deadpan her response: “Suppose I’ve got no one to blame but myself.”

  I had full movement in my arm by day four, and celebrated by touring the Nell’s top deck with Dak. It was basically a weather deck enclosed with a lattice of windows along the ceiling, looking out on the brilliant Runic stars. In place of masts and riggings, though, was a more expansive galley table that could seat the crew. The deck also featured chute-like entrances to turrets, the command room, and other key areas. The space was for eating, lounging, and quick dispersal to emergency stations. “You’re good at blueprints,” I confessed.

  Protected within a metal shell, everything felt homier. I could hear the rhythmic whup-whup-whup of propellers, feel the rattle of turbulence, but from inside, it was contained and safe. Idle Akarri lounged at the galley table, but on seeing me, they slunk below.

  “They’re all worried you drew them too,” Dak said.

  “I heard. I’m not sure what to say to Tammagan. There’s no Hallmark card for this.”

  Dak framed an imaginary card with his h
ands. “ ‘Sorry I drew you into existence, but it was only your physical appearance. The rest of you came from a complex of genetic and environmental forces and personal decisions wholly independent of my will.’ Then a picture of a baby bear hugging a heart.”

  I set up among supply crates stored forward of the galley table, laying out my sketchpad and activating my computer stone. Dak dragged the cargo around to make a seat while I projected my computer screen into a large windowpane overhead. Immediately, I stroked blue sketch lines onto digital paper with stylus and pad.

  “You drawing another ship?” Dak asked as the shapes took form. “Didn’t Ronin warn you against duplicating things?”

  “It’s not a duplicate, and it’s not for Rune.” The Nell was a wonderful vessel, but I was sick of pure functionality. I needed to just draw for a while. “This one’s for me.”

  It took me a few minutes of sketching to realize something was the matter with Dak—something new. I could tell from the hovering and general silence. Instead of asking, I sketched Runic mountains into the background and framed the ship against the huge circle of Big Red.

  “You remember Quinny?” he finally asked.

  “Big feather tattoo on her face. Kind of racist and homophobic, but in a ‘doesn’t seem to have been taught any better’ way.” I was adding a single sail to the vessel, like a sloop, but also pylons for backup propulsion.

  “She got apologetic for giving me and Elsie trouble. Offered to celebrate my prowess in battle by ‘finding the bottom of a whiskey bottle together.’ ”

  “You hate drinking.”

  “Which I told her. To which she replied that I could watch her rid the world of some, so that while on board none would sneak up on me. I was bored, so I agreed.”

  “You drank some, didn’t you?”

  “It took maybe three remarks about how orcs—as a species—lack proper alcohol tolerance. I set out to disprove her thesis.”

  “You let her neg you.”

  “I did.”