Breaking the Suun

by J. A. Culican

  But it was short-lived. Having the second sail tipped us off balance, the back of the ship rising while the front of the ship dipped forward. The bowsprit clipped the top of a tree and sent us into a spin over the forest at the edge of the plateau. I launched myself forward but couldn’t get my feet beneath me as I slammed into something hard. Then I was in the air, the deck spinning beneath me. Arun, still holding the wheel, reached for me, but he was too far away and getting farther away. There was nothing under me now except for the tops of trees. I was not one to give up, but if there was one thing I couldn’t do, it was fly. Even I knew my limits. Sometimes.

  I held my breath as I plummeted. A shadow rocketed out of the treetops. Great, if I didn’t fall to my death, then I would be dinner for some dreadwing family instead. But then the light caught on the creature’s golden wings and I realized it was Stiarna. The griffin passed close enough to me I could reach out and wrap my arms around her neck, abruptly turning my fall into flight. I gripped her shoulders with my knees and grabbed the feathers on her neck, my heart still pounding as my body struggled to catch up with what was happening.

  The extra weight didn’t slow her down. We were headed straight for the Duchess. The airship was still spinning out of control, rising with its rear first. Estrid was hanging from the hull nets, trying to climb her way back on board. But we didn’t stop for her. I had to get that last sail opened, and Stiarna seemed to know that somehow. She took me as close as she could to the foremast, but it wasn’t close enough. She had to keep a safe distance or risk getting knocked around by the ship, but because of that, there was no way I would be able to reach the rope where it was knotted.

  I would have to jump, and trust that Stiarna would catch me again if I were to fall.

  “Frida.”

  My gaze darted to the left, where Erik was pressed against the railing.

  “Tell me what to do.” He was panting, his eyes wide with fear, but he seemed to at least be himself.

  I gave him instructions, shouting to be heard over the wind, and then Stiarna and I pulled back to watch. I was ready to jump in and get him if I needed to, but he seemed to not need my help. He made his way steadily across the deck, arms outstretched for balance. When he reached the mast, he tugged on the rope and the sail unfurled. The ship righted itself with a groan.

  Estrid pulled herself over the railing and collapsed onto the deck. Stiarna landed near her and I dropped from her back, and then bent to help my sister to her feet. When she was standing, she pushed me off her and charged toward Erik, knocking him back with two hands against his chest.

  “What is wrong with you?” she growled at him. “We’re about to be in our second ship wreck, and all you’re worried about is that … that … witch?”

  Erik grabbed her wrists. “I’m sorry.”

  “What?” Estrid blinked, drawn up short by his apology. It was an uncommon event, to be sure.

  “It’s like, when I’m with her, there’s a cloud over my eyes.” He still hadn’t let go of her wrists, but she wasn’t trying to hit him anymore.

  “I know what you mean,” I chimed in. “When she’s near, I feel so angry.”

  Estrid cocked her head at me and raised an eyebrow.

  “Well, angrier than usual.”

  “Frida and I drugged her,” Estrid explained to our brother. “Last night at dinner, Frida gave her a dose of vila leaf powder that would have knocked you on your ass for at least an entire day.”

  I nodded. “And it didn’t even last twelve hours with her.”

  “She can’t be trusted.”

  Erik released Estrid and stepped away from us, running a hand through his hair. Then, to me, he asked, “Where did you get vila leaf powder?”

  “Jyne, one of the young priests in the temple.”

  He shook his head, blinking as if stunned. “Onen help me, I would have done anything for her.”

  “Jyne?” I asked, taken aback.

  “Savarah. Absolutely anything.”

  Before I could respond, a hand on my shoulder whirled me around and I came face to face with Arun. His full lips were set in a stern line, and his eyes were dark and narrowed.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  “Let me be clear,” Arun said, “don’t ever touch my ship again.” The black amulet pulsed quickly, and I imagined it keeping time with his racing heart. He looked fine, though, given the circumstances.

  I turned away, smirking, walking toward where Stiarna was grooming herself on the bow of the ship. “No one wants to touch your ship, anyway. Now, let’s find us some horses.” His glare burned the back of my neck, but I didn’t dare turn back to him.

  Chapter 11

  We flew all day, keeping the Duchess just below the cover of the veil so we could search the ground for any sign of horses. There were none. We did see a blazetaur nest, and a pile of shadebig bones, and once, we’d had to fight off a curious dreadwing, but there was nothing out of the ordinary. At night, when Erik and Estrid had retired to the crew’s quarters below deck, and Stiarna had flown off in search of dinner, I found myself alone with Arun.

  He’d been standoffish all day, quiet and brooding as he flew the ship and the rest of us shouted out tips and directions, chasing false leads across the continent. I didn’t think it was that he was annoyed with our mission or still angry at me for the debacle with the ship. It was something else, something he was keeping tight-lipped about.

  “Hey.” I sidled up to him.

  He looked at me sideways, grunted, and then returned his gaze to the night sky. We were cruising above the veil now, where it was safer, while my siblings rested.

  “So, how do you know where you’re going?” I asked. It wasn’t that I necessarily cared, but I wanted to get him talking.

  At first, it seemed like he wouldn’t respond, but then he sighed and held out a hand. I put my own hand in it, and he raised it to the sky, positioning it so that the thumb and the forefinger made an L-shape. The tip of my forefinger lined up with the brightest star, and my thumb brushed the very edge of Gleet. I was more focused on his hand on mine, though. Every other time he’d touched me, his skin had been warm, almost scalding. Now, it was deathly cold.

  “It’s no different than sailors in ships on the sea, really,” he explained. “Instead of water currents and swells, I use winds and air currents.”

  “And stars?”

  “And stars. And Gleet. The moon is always there, even when the stars are not.”

  I nodded, even though none of it really made sense to me. Erik knew some of this, and since he was our leader, I’d always been content to follow him or whoever he chose to follow. Maybe it was time to learn these things, but it was hard when all I could think about was how cold and lifeless he felt. Even the dark circles beneath his eyes seemed to have returned.

  “Are you okay?” I asked for the second time since boarding the ship.

  He dropped my hand. “No. Not really.”

  I rubbed my fingers, warming them. “Is it to do with that?” I motioned toward the swirling black amulet that hung on a chain around his neck. It darkened. As if aware I was talking about it.

  He lifted a hand to touch it, but let it hover over the stone instead of making contact. “This is the only thing keeping the darkness at bay.”

  “The darkness?”

  “The dark spell that the ur’gels used to resurrect the corpses. It’s inside of me. This—the piece of Lunla’s soul contained inside this amulet is the only thing pushing it back.”

  The piece of her soul? “You mean she gave you a piece of the light?”

  He shrugged. “I guess. I don’t really know how it works. But I can’t take it off. Strict instructions.”

  “What happens if you take it off?”

  After a pause, he said, “I don’t think I want to know.”

  It was hard to reconcile the man beside me with the one I’d met in the mines. The one I’d fought beside on the plateau. The one I’d walked with through the
hedge maze. Now that he’d put words to it, I could see the darkness inside of him, especially in his eyes. He looked weak, angry, despondent. Not like the champion of lost causes. He was a lost cause.

  No. I couldn’t think that way. What I needed was a way to save him. A way to bring him back.

  I tore my eyes away from him and tilted my head back, ready to change the subject if he was. Up here, the sky wasn't just overhead but all around us, a sea of stars. I wondered how many Svands were up here, watching me watching them. Or my mother's people—Suun or otherwise. Were they watching, too? Maybe laughing at my foolishness?

  Arun shifted beside me. “What are you thinking?”

  “About my family. My ancestors.”

  He looked thoughtfully up at the sky. “That’s right. The D’ahvol believe their ancestors are in the stars.”

  “You don’t?” The elves and the D’ahvol had such similar belief systems I’d assumed they were the same.

  “It’s a nice idea.” He searched the skies and then pointed at a particularly bright star with a red tint to it. “That one would be Ashryn, I think.”

  My first instinct was to tell him it didn’t work that way, but then I processed what he said. “Who?”

  “Ashryn Phina, my youngest sister.”

  “She died?” Elves had long life spans, and death was just as rare as birth among their kind. The D’ahvol, though descended from the elves, had shorter life spans, although we still lived longer than an average human.

  “Yes, when we were very young.”

  “Do you remember her well?” I was always curious about what others who’d lost people at a young age remembered. If they had more of their loved one than I had of my mother—the bits and pieces, glimpses of things I couldn’t distinguish from true memory and a story told to me by my father.

  “Yes, some things,” he said. “She had fiery red hair that she wore too long, and it was always a tangled mess. She would weave grasses and flowers into the strands like some nature spirit.”

  I could see her in my mind’s eye, though I had never met her. “What happened to her?”

  “She became very sick. No one knows why, and no one could do anything about it.” His hands shifted on the ship’s steering wheel as we surged forward with a gust of wind. “I sat by her day and night for weeks on end. If she could have been saved by sheer force of will, I swear to you she would be with us today.”

  His original lost cause, I realized.

  “Could it be that my parents will lose both of us to some dark sickness?”

  “Don’t say that.” I wondered if the darkness didn’t just affect his body, but his spirit, too.

  “I haven’t seen them in years. I left not long after Ashryn died.” He laughed but there was no humor in the sound. “I tried to tell myself I was doing it to help others, but really, I was just afraid to go home. What will they think of me?” He turned his dark gaze on me. “Are they disappointed that I was the one who survived?”

  “Of course not,” I said, though of course I had no idea what Arun’s family thought of him. I couldn’t imagine my father feeling that way, though. I tried to imagine how he would feel, what he would say if I said something like that to him. “They would just be glad to have you home.”

  The ship rocked, and Arun turned his attention back to it, pulling on a rope to loosen one of the sails.

  “What about you?” he asked after tying the rope off again. “Who do you see in the stars?”

  I could lie. There were dozens of answers—my father’s parents, dead before I was born. My Aunt Ragna, who died a few years ago in a dispute with an Oubliee trader. My young cousin Vott, who drowned in the waters beneath Bor’sur. But he’d told me something of substance. I could do the same. “My mother.”

  “I didn’t realize she was dead.”

  I shrugged, glad he was watching the ship and the sky, and not me. “I don’t know if she is or not, but I don’t want to think that she left me of her own free will. Something took her from me, and I’ll see her again someday, when I ride the stars at her side.”

  “Do you think she was killed because of her Suun heritage? Like they’re hunting you now?”

  “No,” I said quickly. The thought honestly hadn’t occurred to me before, mainly because I was so certain she wasn’t descended from Onen Suun, and neither was I.

  “How can you be so sure?”

  It was my turn to laugh. “There is no possible way I’m the Suun heir. Saving the world is definitely not in my destiny.”

  “It could be.”

  I wasn’t laughing anymore. “It’s not.” I knew with every part of me, inside and out, I was not the one meant to save the world from darkness. I couldn’t even save one elf.

  It was as if the air responded to my turmoil. The Iron Duchess began to shake violently, the sails beating as loud as drums against the sudden wind. A bolt of lightning below us lit the churning sea of clouds, and not a second later, thunder cracked, deafeningly loud. I cringed and grabbed the wheel to steady myself.

  Arun was doing something with ropes and pulleys and paused, looking up at me.

  “Take the wheel,” he instructed.

  “What?”

  “Take it. All you have to do is hold her steady.”

  “Wait, no.” But my hand was already on it, and when he stepped away, hauling on one of the ropes and following it to another deck, I took his place by instinct, both hands white-knuckling the spokes.

  The Duchess was rocked by the storm. It seemed to have come out of nowhere and we were right in the middle of it. But I held on as tight as I could. Once, I loosened my grip and the wheel spun wildly. I’d gotten it quickly back under control. I caught glimpses of Arun whenever lightning illuminated the sky and the ship. He moved as fast as any crew might, running between ropes, sails, and masts, pulling, knotting, and releasing, while I stood as still as a statue, petrified of letting go.

  It couldn’t have lasted more than a few minutes, but it felt like forever. Eventually, we were on the other side of the storm, with nothing to show for it except for a wall of dark clouds behind us.

  “You couldn’t have gone around that?” I asked when Arun came back to the helm.

  “Sure, I could have,” he answered. “But where would be the fun in that?”

  Sadly, I couldn’t tell if he was joking or not. “Take your ship back.”

  He stood back and surveyed me, rubbing his chin as if in thought. Rain glistened on his brow and made his shirt cling to his broad chest. I did my best not to look. “I don’t know,” he said finally. “I don’t mind the sight of you at the wheel as much as I thought I might.”

  “I’m going to let go.”

  “No, don’t.” He held his hands up in surrender. “But how about a lesson? Maybe you should learn. In case something does happen to me.”

  I wanted nothing less than to fly this ship any more than I had to. “I already told you. Don’t talk like that. Nothing’s going to happen to you.”

  “It might. Come on, just the basics.”

  With a few steps, he was behind me, his chest to my back, his hands covering mine on the wheel. He was saying something, lifting a hand to point at some part of the ship, but it was all nonsense to me. All I could think about was his breath, warm on my ear, and the chill of his hands on mine, all the little places where our bodies pressed together. My toes curled in my boots and I ground my teeth together. I was no better than a silly human girl melting under a man’s touch. What was wrong with me? What if Erik or Estrid walked out now and saw us? I would never live it down.

  I turned my head to try to look at him, so I could object, push him away, but instead, I caught a glimpse of the amulet around his neck. The black gem was pulsing quickly, truly keeping time, I realized, with his racing heart. I swallowed, trying extremely hard to keep my composure.

  He had an amulet to keep his darkness at bay, but what about me? What did I have to keep my own shadows at a distance? Nothing but my dignity and
the walls I put up around myself.

  With every ounce of self-control I possessed, I ducked beneath his arm and freed myself from the cage he’d made for me out of his body. He stopped talking and blinked at me where I stood a few paces away now. I was safely out of his reach, and he was out of mine. And it was a good thing, too, because some irrational part of my brain wanted me to reach out and run my fingers through his wind-blown hair.

  “For the last time, nothing is going to happen to you.” I took another step back just to be safe, and rested my hand on the ax handle at my hip. “I don’t want to learn how to fly the ship because I don’t need to. Because you’ll be doing it.”

  He didn’t say anything else as I turned away and left the helm, descending onto the lower deck just as Stiarna touched down. I sat on a crate and she curled beside me. Her back and wings were wet with rain. I rubbed her, drying her with my hands. When that was done, I curled into her warmth, my head on her shoulder. She purred, a low rumble against me. All the while, I felt Arun’s eyes on me and forced myself to keep looking forward at the sky ahead, a sky that felt strangely less like an ocean and more like a black hole where I might lose myself.

  Chapter 12

  “Horses!”

  The shout jerked me into consciousness. Stiarna had curled around me, and she shifted when I sat up, clucking with irritation. The sun had risen while I’d slept, and I squinted in the sudden brightness.

  “Where?” There was the thunder of footsteps as someone raced to the starboard railing.

  I stood quickly, rubbing the sleep from my eyes. Estrid and Erik were just to my left, leaning against the railing, while Arun stood at the helm where I’d left him, a hand over his eyes as he tried to see what they saw. I crossed to the rail and leaned over.

  We were below the veil, flying over a field situated between two plateaus, rocky cliff faces reaching for the ship. The field was dotted with large tawny animals, their necks sloping toward the ground. Stiarna leapt onto the bow and began to pace back and forth in the small space. One of the horses looked up, sounded a whinny of alarm, and they all bolted, kicking up dust as they ran from our shadow.