Flotsam

by R J Theodore

  Talis let out a breath in relief.

  “Is that my intent? Don’t I really just want to get my crew and my ship through this, long enough to make use of that payload in cargo? Don’t I really just want things to go back to the way they were?”

  “Do you?”

  She accepted the pouch when Meran dropped it onto her open palm. The weight of it, though small, was reassuring.

  “Things can’t go back, I know. Some things either can’t be the same again or shouldn’t be. But to change it? It’s too big of a call for me to make.”

  “Whatever you decide, Talis, please at least do not lose that again. There are those with whom I would prefer not to align my will.”

  “You’ve got my word on that.” Talis pictured Hankirk, how hungrily he had watched Meran. And now he knew the ring would control her.

  Talis crossed to her berth, climbed up onto the mattress, booted feet crushing the blanket she had just replaced and smoothed, and depressed the panel that revealed her small wall-mounted safe. She turned the low-profile brass wheel in the proper sequence of dextral and back to chamber the locking pins and swing the door open, then tossed the pouch in, where it fell against the collection of other important items she kept.

  When the safe was secure and hidden again, she turned back to Meran.

  “So tell me,” she said. She crossed back to the table and sat down opposite where Meran had resettled herself. “If there was no ring. If your will was your own, what would you do?”

  Meran’s eyes sparkled, and the blue glow of them seemed to go transparent. They became fathomless, like Talis could fall into them and drown. The image of water flashed through her mind. Dark water. An ocean.

  Not the ocean that encircled Nexus, filtering the green light through glassy blue translucency. An ocean with shorelines, trenches. She saw swells, peaks of white like those of mountains. The swells rose, curled as they rushed against rocky cliffs and crashed, flinging white spray violently against the dark stones. Above it, the sky was opaque and pale gray.

  She blinked. “Was that you?”

  Meran’s eyes were still flashing. She did not respond.

  “What was that?”

  “My home,” Meran said, quietly. “But that is no longer of any consequence.”

  Talis watched her. She didn’t seem sad. Or angry. “That was Peridot as it was before? Pre-Cataclysm?”

  Meran shifted, took a deep breath through her nose. She went back to scanning the room, but Talis got the impression that her gaze extended far past the confines of the cabin. “It was not called Peridot. That is a name as unfamiliar to me as what this world has become.”

  “What was it called?” Talis caught herself leaning forward, shoulders climbing up her neck. Tense. This information seemed so important to her, and she didn’t know why.

  The simula turned back to look at her. “It was called Meran, of course.”

  Talis stared. It was an absurd answer. But it was right. She could feel, in her bones, that it was right. And things shaped into something forming a sort of sense. The Five, Meran had called them thieves. She was fragmented, bound into rings. Her rawness. Her regal bearing, her predatoriness. She was wild, unharnessed. Tempered with wisdom.

  She was the gods-rotted planet.

  Or a piece of it, anyway. One piece out of ten.

  “You still haven’t answered my question,” Talis said, at the same moment she realized it. “What would you do, given your druthers?”

  Meran flashed teeth, a smile that was something else as well. With two hands, she pulled her ankles up onto the seat and sat with her knees bent to the sides. The predator was gone again, shifting back to the sage. The smile became gentler.

  “The only thing I can do. Meet your goddess as she has bid, and destroy that which endangers this world.”

  It itched at Talis’s mind. That was not a clean answer, interpretable at least two ways. That would serve Hankirk’s position. Would serve hers. Would serve peace, and would serve destruction.

  She opened her mouth, trying to frame a question that would require a direct explanation.

  But she hesitated, no longer sure she even wanted an answer.

  She’d already decided that she didn’t want to be responsible for the power this woman possessed. Would unleash, if given the nod.

  Meran had destroyed the alien ship by placing her hands against its engine. Even The Five—now The Four, Talis reminded herself—needed raw ingredients for their alchemical processes. Needed equipment and a lifetime’s worth of researched notes. Meran just needed a free hand.

  Maybe the simula would do something reckless. But Talis knew Hankirk would. Knew the aliens would. Maybe reckless was the force she needed to employ. If Talis wore the ring, at least she knew her ship and crew would be spared. That was high on her list of priorities, guaranteed even if Meran followed her instincts, not her words. Without the ring to keep rein on Meran, there was no way to know if the strange woman would even consider their safety.

  While these thoughts spun in her head, Meran only watched, waiting for her to speak.

  Talis opened her mouth again, finally deciding on a question.

  The ship’s bell rang hard and fast from outside before she could speak. The intercom behind her crackled to life.

  “Captain,” came Dug’s voice, “we are making our approach.”

  She pushed her chair back and rose, crossing to the intercom. Thumbed the textured brass button that opened the pipe. “Okay, Dug, be right there.”

  She turned back to the table, trying to remember exactly how she’d decided to phrase the question.

  Meran’s chair was empty.

  Chapter 35

  Talis knew, from the pull in her chest and the pulsing ache in her head, how close they were to Nexus.

  To see its great arching shape filling her field of vision, though, took her breath away. Less than the top half of Nexus’s sphere could be seen. The rest was blocked from her view below the railing and above the lift envelope. She turned to look aft and saw the ocean channels forming a cage that closed around them. From this side of the ocean, the water looked impossibly dark. The overlapping bands that enclosed the space nearest Nexus seemed almost solid, though they shifted from gray-blue to darker, almost black depths. Shadows moved within the water, sinuous forms lurking in the changing currents, unconcerned with their presence. Flashes of green light reflected off the roiling surface, and white caps seethed along its edges.

  “Well, I’ve been to Nexus. I can cross that off my list,” said Tisker from the wheelhouse. His voice was taut. “Ready to leave again when you are, Cap.”

  The light was intense, so that she had to squint even when she looked away from it. Dug brought her a pair of tinted goggles to match the ones he, Tisker, and Sophie were already wearing. Beneath the dark lenses, their mouths were thin lines. Pinched with pain. Scrimshaw stood beside them, xist nictitating membranes shielding xist eyes against the harsh light.

  The goggles shaded Talis’s vision and gave her some relief. It was still bright, but at least she could look directly at Nexus for a few moments at a time without her eyes watering.

  From a distance, as she had known it her whole life, Nexus had always looked like a smooth sphere. A neon green ball whose undulating ribbons of light filtered through the rippling ocean that enveloped it. A sparkling reminder of their gods’ power. Now that the ocean had parted for them, she could see that the surface of Nexus had its own texture and detail. There was a hole, interrupting the curving silhouette to one side. An arch. An entrance. Angular lines moved across its surface, shifting, rotating, overlapping, all at different speeds. The marks fit with what she knew of alchemy, but that wasn’t much. That was the domain of The Five. Best way to live to old age was to maintain a complete lack of arcane understanding.

  But Onaya Bone said that Ne
xus was made of a different kind of power. Something that the gods could use for protection when alchemy proved useless against the aliens.

  That it was the same power trapped in the rings.

  That the ring—and by extension, that meant Meran—was a weapon.

  Talis looked around the open deck but did not see any sign of the simula.

  “Their fleets have engaged in battle with The Divine Alchemists,” Dug said.

  He handed her the scope, which she held up to her goggles, struggling to see through it properly with the extra distance between it and her eye.

  Large as Nexus was before her, the scope proved how far away they still were. The Yu’Nyun and Veritor ships appeared as clustered dots against the flood of green. In the scope she saw them more clearly. Winds flapped the airships’ sails and pushed their lift balloons like toys in a bath. They were firing their weapons at something… at.…

  She tugged on her ’locks piously. Then felt the pang of the memory and squinted into the scope again. That could not be Silus Cutter she saw. From this distance she could only discern the backlit shape of a figure levitating in the open skies around Nexus to face the assault. Too slender to be Helsim Breaker. Quad-limbed, so not Lindent Vein. That left Onaya Bone or Arthel Rak.

  They’d know when they got closer.

  What was she thinking? They were going in closer.

  Whomever it was raised their arms defensively. Flares of light popped with distant rumbles as weapon fire struck against some kind of shield. Nexus energy. The deity fought back, but whatever powers they summoned were deflected off the alien ships.

  Even though the god was as tall as the Veritor airships were from keel to weather deck, they looked so small against the brilliant green sphere behind them. It did not give Talis hope. Her faith faltered, and her stomach tilted with the vacuum it left behind. But Nexus dominated the scene. Surely something that large was strong enough to make a difference.

  Whether to wear the ring seemed to be the critical question, more and more, minute by minute.

  Once, the strong winds that whipped the Veritor ships about would have been a reassurance that the gods would protect Peridot. That Silus Cutter would protect his children.

  But Silus Cutter was gone. Someone else was commanding the high winds in the battle out there, and it wasn’t the gods.

  Wasn’t the Veritors, either.

  Regardless of any pact made with the aliens, those fragile wooden airships had no friends in that fight. Jostled by the winds, the shudder of impacts crashing against their hulls was plain to see even from this distance. As the flagship was pushed sideways through the sky, two more figures were revealed on the ship’s far side. Helsim Breaker was easy to identify, twice as wide as the other being beside him. His hands clapped together, and two Veritor ships moved sideways and crashed against their flagship’s sides, as though they were all being crushed in an invisible compactor.

  Talis edged to where Scrimshaw stood, watching xist former allies. Not a hint of what xe was thinking.

  “So what’s your plan? What do you want out of this?” She watched xin through her dark goggles. Xe turned xist head to acknowledge her without looking away from the battle beginning in earnest.

  “I do not know,” Scrimshaw replied. “For now, I suppose I want to survive long enough to decide.”

  Flames spiraled from the second figure—that would be Arthel Rak, then—and as she raised the scope back up to her eyes, they crashed into the lift envelope of one of the Veritor ships like a battering ram. The hull tilted suddenly to hang lopsided and low beneath its buckling canvas.

  Black smoke swirled forth from the engines of another ship. More flames appeared along the hull of a third, traveling along the railing, speeding toward the lift lines.

  The show of divine power would have been more reassuring if the aliens were also sustaining damage.

  Talis frowned. The Veritors would fall out of the skies and Wind Sabre would be left alone to face gods and aliens. Both had used her. And if she didn’t do this right, she’d be playing right into line with what they wanted.

  Those two crates of money in the hull of her ship were not enough to soothe the fire of shame that seared her gut and twisted beneath her shoulder blades. If anything, they made it worse.

  Snapping the scope closed, she tossed it to Dug and hurried back to her cabin.

  She climbed onto her bunk, rumpling the bedclothes beneath her boots, and uncovered the safe.

  Meran would still get what she wanted, by her own spoken definition. Talis wasn’t going to leave the particulars up to the ancient woman who sought vengeance, nor would she hand over the ring to a cowardly goddess. Nor to the Veritors, nor the aliens.

  She was the only one qualified to represent the folk who busted their tails, every rotted day, just trying to be decent and get by. To survive. For the folks whose world was under attack, whose gods were under attack. Whose Nexus was about to be shattered, drained, harvested.

  She still had no big plan, just a sense of how much damage all those conspiracies might cause.

  So what if she didn’t know what was best? Of all parties, she might be the only one who would lose any sleep over it.

  The safe swung open and she snatched up the pouch. Untied its strings and dug inside.

  And pulled out Meran’s brass-beaded anklet.

  Chapter 36

  An angry wind was howling on deck when Talis emerged, running, from her cabin. It forced her to stop and catch her balance.

  Hair whipped around and into her face, stray tendrils getting in her mouth as she shouted for Dug.

  Wind Sabre’s hull creaked against the gale. She strained against her lines, moving faster than the twin engines ought to have been capable. They were caught in a tailwind, carried forward toward Nexus as though the winds shared their urgency. She heard the canvas above, the small sails thumping against the envelope. Tisker fought the wheel, his stance wide, his elbows bent and braced tight against his sides, his full attention given to keeping Wind Sabre on course.

  Dug appeared at Talis’s side. Shirtless and wearing no less than six scabbards strapped to his hips, back, and arms. Those were just the ones she could see.

  “You said Silus Cutter was dead,” Sophie shouted, running to join them. A light bearded ax hung from each hip.

  There was hope in her voice. Anticipation. She thought the gale was his. She thought they were saved.

  Talis didn’t answer. She deftly pulled a cotton string off her wrist and pushed her hair back, securing it out of her face.

  The Veritors had planned to usurp power from the gods. The Yu’Nyun had beaten them to it.

  A line started to flap in the wind, coming loose of its anchoring. Sophie scurried to secure it.

  “Where’s Meran?”

  Her arms occupied, Sophie tilted her chin upward. “I saw her climbing the lift lines. Captain, what’s happening?”

  “She took the ring.”

  Which didn’t even make sense. She didn’t need it, Talis had tucked it safely out of reach. She wouldn’t be influenced by—

  “Where’s Hankirk?” Dug’s mind was on the same track.

  Sophie’s eyes went big, and the rope slipped a bit through her fingers before she tightened her grip again. “Isn’t he in… ?”

  Talis opened her mouth to cut the question short, to tell Sophie to go check, go be sure he was in the brig. But Sophie’s gaze twitched away, beyond Talis’s shoulder. Dug’s hands went to the hilt of a knife at his hip.

  Talis felt as though her stomach had dropped into her boots.

  She turned. Hankirk’s face was taut, his smile triumphant. His right hand was held up at eye level, proudly displaying Lindent Vein’s pearl signet ring. He kept it aloft longer than necessary. He wanted her to see it. To see that he’d won after all.

  “Y
ou could have joined me,” he said. His voice was thick, impassioned.

  Talis raised her hand to her hip. Her holster was there but she hadn’t gotten around to loading her pistol into it. It was still stowed in her cabin.

  He laughed. She’d never heard such an awful, cruel laugh. Not from him. Not from the assassins at Jasper’s door. It went beyond greed and pride. It was larger than a single man’s desires. There was an echo of Meran in there.

  Dug was at her side, his muscles tensed, but she could read his posture. He was ready to attack but wouldn’t move without her signal. Either he’d learned his lesson about being short-fused or she’d earned his trust back. She tried to find comfort in that.

  It wouldn’t be a quick fight, but Hankirk only had the ring. Might hurt if he punched her, but she’d have a knife in his stomach before he could turn Meran on them. Finally clean up the mess she’d made by letting him live the three—no, four—chances she’d had to see him off.

  She reached for the sheath on the back of Dug’s belt, pulled a vicious curved blade free, and leaped.

  Hankirk fell backward and she sliced the forearm he brought up to shield his head and neck as she followed him to the deck. She felt the bone through the scimitar’s grip as the blade sliced into it and stuck there.

  His yell was sharp with pain and surprise. At least his voice sounded mortal again. She grabbed his right hand, pinning it by the wrist to the deck, and got her knee down on it. The ring knocked back against the wood. It was still a threat as long as he was wearing it. She leaned in, pressing the blade deeper into his arm with both hands. Blood ran from the wound and dripped across his cheek.

  Sophie and Dug were there, weapons out, waiting for Talis’s signal. She spared a moment to resolve that everyone would carry pistols on watch from now on.

  Hankirk’s eyes were unfocused as he looked up at her.

  “You lack the vision to see this through,” he said, his voice strained.

  Talis spat in his eye.