by Blooding, SM
Reality punched its way into my chest. I was safe. I was no longer fighting, didn’t have to push it away. I had time to deal with it. “Father’s really gone.”
“You saw him die.”
“I did.” I closed my eyes as they started to tear, and opened them, looking away. “I tried telling myself that it hadn’t really happened. After all, I couldn’t really step out of the fire they set on me. I was supposed to have died with him. Why didn’t I? How could I have survived and not tried to save him?”
“You can’t blame yourself, Synn.”
I ran a hand over my face. “He was a better man than I.”
“He had a longer time to become that man.”
I sent him a ghost of a smile. “How do I return to the Yusrra Samma and replace him?”
Ryo didn’t have any words of wisdom for me.
“They’re going to expect it, you know. They may have found a temporary replacement, probably Isra, but they won’t follow her forever. They need me to step up and lead them.”
“You don’t think you’re ready.”
“A leader’s every action has consequences on the people he leads.” I choked on a thought I’d never had the nerve to fully acknowledge. “I’m the reason Father was killed.”
Ryo frowned, leaning forward slightly. “Surely not.”
I nodded and continued in a stronger voice. “They were setting fire to the Umira Family.” I swallowed, remembering the smell of their burning flesh, the sound of the sea flax popping and cracking, the sight of their pain even as they fought to remain quiet…for their children. “I was witnessing their surviving children watch.” The images flashed through my mind. “I drew my sword.”
He shook his head and sank back to the wall. “So what?”
I closed my eyes, replaying those events in my mind. “I broke the treaty.”
“The unsigned treaty that the Hands themselves break constantly?”
“I drew steel under the flag of truce, and because of that, the El’Asim, one of the greatest Families left, is without a leader and for what? Were the Umira avenged? Did it help them at all? Were their children spared?”
He was silent for a long moment. “Synn, you’re not thinking straight. The El’Asim are fine. Isra is doing a good job in leading them. They’ve stayed out of sight of the Hands since you and your father went to them under the flag of truce. Word has spread even to the lesser families currently under the rule of the Hands.”
“Word of what?” I spat.
“Of the Hand’s treachery.”
“And who cares?” I let my hand splash back into the water. “Who’s going to do anything about it? Who will stand against them?”
Ryo pried himself off the wall. “We will.”
I leaned forward. “They have better weapons. Their ammunitions will tear right through our airships. Their air vessels, all of them – their boats and planes – are made of metal. What do we have that could damage that?”
His dark eyes lightened and he leaned in closer. “Your pistol.”
“We’re going to need a lot more than one pistol.”
He nodded. “But it melts through their metal as if it were the skin of a lethara to their bullets. We could even the playing field.”
I let that thought sink in, and then another jolted me to the present. “Wait. Their bullets to the skin of a lethara?”
“Yeah,” Ryo said, sitting back slightly, gauging my reaction. “They’ve started targeting the letharan. Without them, many people have no place to live. So far, nothing drastic. The letharan have been damaged, but are otherwise fine. The Hands have lost all concern for the well-being of anyone or anything other than themselves.”
And where would they stop? If it were up to Nix, they wouldn’t stop until the world lay at her feet. We had to do something.
“We need to talk to Joshua. He knows the design of the pistol better than I do. He’s really the brains of the operation, anyway.”
“I figured someone had to be,” Ryo said with a grin as he lay back, draping his arms over the rim again. “I knew it couldn’t be you. So tell me about Yvette,” he said, his eyes crinkling.
I chuckled, but my mind was already elsewhere.
Could we launch a revolt?
No. The real question was if we could launch a successful revolt. And what would be the price? Would it be worth it?
I recalled my stay in the Hands’ care.
There wasn’t much I’d not be willing to pay, but I knew that Nix would extract a hefty sum if we failed.
We just had to make sure we didn’t fail.
CHAPTER 20
TAKE ME TO MY YVETTE
Dressed in clothes that fit right – pants that were loose from my waist to my knee-high boots, a sash to keep breezes out of my loose shirt, and a turquoise vest – I was ready to find my friends. So was Ryo.
“Don’t you have something else to do?” I asked as we walked down the hall, opening doors and peering inside.
He shrugged. “Not today. I’m off.”
“So who’s filling in for you?”
“Makoto.”
I closed the door I’d just opened. The room looked nice but unused. “Really? I didn’t figure him to be the type to sit in council meetings.”
Ryo threw his head back and laughed. He looked relatively naked without any weapons on him. “Oh, he’s not, and he’s hating every moment of it, which makes me insanely happy.”
I chuckled as we continued down the hall to the next door. “That’s brotherly love.”
“Isn’t it? However, after—” He stopped, pursed his lips and charged on after glancing in my direction. “After our father was murdered, Mother decided it would be best if all of her children were trained to take her place, not just Oki.”
I nodded, my hand on the doorknob. “That’s a good idea.”
Ryo’s expression was open and honest. That’s what I liked most about him. “Zara was never trained to take Father’s place. She never learned the way of the ship.”
She hadn’t. She’d been Father’s little princess, learning the ways of being a proper warrior woman and a wife. She loved living on the ship, but she had no intentions of ever captaining one, much less the entire fleet. What he didn’t say, however, was that after I’d allowed myself to be captured, I’d left my Family unprotected. He didn’t have to.
“How is Oki taking to the idea she might not inherit the Ino?”
Ryo nodded as I opened the door. “Relieved and hopeful, but we all know the Ino is a matriarchal Family. I will never inherit.”
Finally, we found someone. The room was large and in dark blues and gold. A big bed took up the far wall, and a deep pool lay off to the right. An entire bank of windows overlooked the city. Sitting on the floor were Keeley and Joshua.
He shook his head and entered the room, a warm smile on his face. “Synn,” he said, switching to Handish, “why didn’t you tell me she was so beautiful?”
Keeley smiled, embarrassed. She blushed as she pulled herself off the floor. She was dressed in a long robe of the Sakin people, with small ornate flowers embroidered all over and cinched at the waist with a wide pink belt. She held out her hand. “I’m Keeley.”
Ryo glanced at me and took her hand, bowing. “I’m pleased to meet you. What language should we speak?”
“Handish would probably work best.” She smiled apologetically. “As Synn can attest, I’m not fluent in languages. They frustrate me.”
I kept my chuckle to myself.
She must have seen it, though, because her hand whipped out and knocked me on the arm.
I rubbed at it playfully. “And this is Joshua.”
He didn’t rise. His attention was focused on the diagrams spread out on the floor in front of him. He waved. “Mm-hmm. It’s a pleasure ta meet ye and all tha’.”
“And they’re related?” Ryo asked with a half smile.
I flared my eyes and headed in Joshua’s direction. “What are you working on?”
“Tha’ bloody pistol of yours. Nami.” He looked up at me, his green eyes wide with mock horror. “Nice lady. She wants me ta configure the rotten thing to everyone here. Apparently, yer Mark’s different’n theirs, an’ I have no stinkin’ idea how.”
“It’s not a bad idea.”
He grunted, flipping through the large sheets. “I seem to be missin’ some of my documents. I thought we’d grabbed everythin’.”
I shrugged. “At least we know where they are if they were left behind. It’s doubtful anyone else will find them.”
Joshua kept his glare focused on the drawings in front of him.
“Do you need someone to practice on?” Ryo offered.
Joshua pulled back and sat up, finally paying attention to my brother. He frowned. “This’n’s related to ye?”
I chuckled. “Yeah, as you’d know if you were paying attention.”
“I was concentratin’.”
“Oldest brother.”
“Ah.” Joshua raised his hand. “Ryo. Nice ta meet ye.”
Ryo’s eyebrows rose. “Joshua.” He took my friend’s hand firmly. “Nice to meet you.”
Keeley looked at me. “I hear there’s an observatory.”
I hadn’t. “Really?”
Ryo waved us off. “Oh yes. There’s some stairs on the left hand side of the hall. Take them down to the bottom floor, and then just follow the hallway all the way to the end. You can’t miss it. Now, Joshua, what do you need from me?”
“Well, for one, I need ta know how your Mark works and wha’ it leave behind when ye use it. Care ta show off for me?”
Keeley shook her head and sent her brother a dark look. “Take me somewhere else, please, for the love of green and growing things.”
I nodded and offered my elbow.
We walked out the door and down the wide hallway, meeting no one.
Keeley was quiet. “These clothes feel odd.”
I smiled, but said nothing, my eyes searching for the stair. “You’re just used to the corset and all those ridiculous skirts.”
She nodded slowly. “Maybe. I do feel a bit…underdressed.”
There was a stone arch without a door and stairs that led both up and down. We headed down. I took the lead as there wasn’t enough room on the winding staircase for us to walk side by side. At every landing, there was a window, allowing light in, but between landings, there were the sconces of false blue light.
“How big is this city?” she asked.
I turned. She was staring out one of the windows.
I walked back up to her and peered outside. It looked huge. Based on the fact that the one room I’d been in looked out through the lethara’s skin, this building had to be on the far end. Not really practical for defense, but when you have a lethara doing most of the work for you, I guess the tactics were different. “It’s several levels. They’ve had this lethara for as many turns as I can remember. They haven’t even started training the next ones. This one should survive another twenty to thirty turns or so and will probably grow at least twice as big.”
“That’s amazing.”
I smiled and continued down the stair. “I really don’t know anything about them.”
“But you were raised to travel and meet them.”
“Oh, sure.” I put a hop in my step. I was happy, almost content. “We stopped at them and re-supplied when we needed, or traded when trading was good. We even helped occasionally, but I never spent any real time aboard one before.”
“But your Family lives here.”
I shook my head. There was another door leading off to another level, but the staircase still led down. “This is only one side of my Family. The Ino live here. I was raised among the El’Asim.”
“How many brothers and sisters do you have?”
She was starting to sound a little winded, so I slowed down. “Well, there’s Ryo whom you met, and Makoto, my next brother.”
She made a sound that have been a “hmm.”
“Then there’s Zara, me and Oki. I hope you get to meet her. She’s nice. You remind me a little of her, actually.”
“Who lives where?”
“Mother kept Ryo, Makoto and Oki, saying they would carry the Mark of Ino. She gave me and Zara to my father.”
“How could she give away a child like that?”
“It was necessary and part of the marriage agreement.” I shrugged. “You’d have to meet my mother. We’re part of the last seven great Families, and we do what we have to in order to survive. That means making some tough choices.”
“But she never wanted to spend any time with you?”
I refused to let it bother me. Mother had never cared. Why should I? We had to be getting close to the bottom. I could finally see the lower levels of the city out of the windows. “It was mutual. I didn’t want to be here. She didn’t have any use for me. It just worked out.”
Keeley didn’t say anything.
“Do you remember anything about your mother?” I asked carefully.
She was quiet for almost an entire level. “I remember her smile. She used to make the light dance.”
“Was that something to do with her Mark?” I had no idea what she was talking about, making the light dance. The Bahrains were the Family of hearth and home, and while I never quite understood what that meant, after watching Joshua, I realized it involved dirt and growing things.
“Maybe.” Her voice was quiet.
Time to change the subject. “So, what do you hope to see in the observatory?”
That was exactly what she needed to talk about. She speculated on all the different types of fish we might see, depending on what tide we were in and what ocean we were traveling through. There were fish with arms, and fish with fins that weren’t fins like the giraficus. She even provided a name for the large beast I’d seen through the skin of the lethara. An ocwhal. Neat.
Sometimes, she could be a complete nerd. It was nice to just listen to her talk, getting excited about what she might see.
We finally made it to the bottom. I tipped my head, looked up through the center of the winding case, and hoped there was a better way of getting back to the top where our rooms were. Otherwise, this whole going to the observatory thing was going to get old real quick.
The hallway was different here. We were below the city and all the walls were made of something opaque. Reaching out, I found that it was flexible and cold as the water undoubtedly was on the other side.
I was suddenly a little sick. I didn’t particularly care to drown down here.
Keeley didn’t seem to mind in the least. Her soft soled shoes made little sound on the blue tiled floor as she flitted from one window to the next, exclaiming over all the wildlife we were seeing.
“What are those?” she asked.
I had no idea what she was pointing at, but after hearing her tell me in great detail about all the things we would see, I was guessing she’d seen something she hadn’t expected. I peered through the wall. The closer I got to the wall, the easier it was to see through. “What?”
There were fish and some hard disk looking creatures with thick legs and, oh, there was one of those creatures with the eight legs she was so excited about seeing. It looked vaguely like a lethara, only a smaller, fewer limbed thing. It was a dark orange instead of clear.
“Do you see those things that almost look like snakes? There are so many of them. I can’t tell where they start.”
Snakes? I stared, but didn’t see what she was seeing.
And then I did. “Those are the trunks and tendrils of the lethara.”
“Oh!” Her eyes were wide. “I didn’t realize there were so many.”
“You do understand that the trunks hold up the city.” We were looking at it from the bottom up. “Look. Each of the larger trunks hold the platforms that they build the city on. Then each of those platforms are connected by bridges.”
“Oh, holy dirt,” she whispered, her hands pressed dangerously tight to
the thin film that separated us from drowning. “Look at that.”
I was. I’d never really paid that much attention to a letharan city before. It was really fascinating from down here. We could see the dark platforms, the solid walls and the opaque windows, all lit with neon blue, orange, pink and green. That’s when I realized what the sconces were powered with. “Do you see all the false light?”
She nodded, her mouth slightly agape.
“It’s the digestive juices of the lethara. The city is built right into its very existence.”
She turned a bright gaze to me. “So there are tendrils in the walls?”
I nodded. “I assume so, yes. I have no other idea how it would work. Out here, we try to fashion our lives around a natural existence. They take great care of their beast, their home, and because of that, their lethara takes great care of them.”
She shook her head and pulled away from the window. “This is so fascinating. Is your airship similar?”
I pursed my lips and walked down the hall, my eyes narrowed. “Yes and no. We have a jellyfish, what we call an air jelly, that we secure to our rigging. He eats whatever’s in the air and emits a gas that keeps us afloat. We never have to gather or harvest anything. It’s constantly renewing itself. Our ships are made from dried sea kelp, which is light, flexible to a point and durable. We travel by the wind.” I shook my head. “We live a simpler life, I think.”
“You sound like you miss it.”
I nodded, sharing a sad smile with her. “I do.”
Her eyes grew distant as we walked.
There was a large bright room with a raised ledge at the end of the hall. Streams of light refracted off of water, creating waves of shadow that danced along the floors and ceiling.
“We used to live on an island.”
Her voice was so quiet. I didn’t want to press. If she felt the need to talk, I’d listen.
“I remember green fields. And there was this little purple flower that would grow all over the hills. It smelled so nice and clean.”
“It sounds lovely.”
“The winters were spent on the ice. Our homes would be submerged, so we built new ones out of ice and snow.”
“Brr,” I said with a smiling shiver.
