by R J Theodore
Talis and Sophie left the dry goods shop just inside the ring of the docks. The last of their supplies for the voyage ahead were ordered and would be delivered to Fortune’s Storm in a few hours’ time. Then they’d set off for Haelli to learn what other danger they could head off before it got loose in the skies.
“He is,” Talis said. “And he’d pay me in kisses if I allowed it. I never thought he had it in him to be so contrite.”
The tension in her shoulders and jaw was slipping away. She was relaxed, though she almost didn’t recognize the feeling. Everything was under control again. The spirals of desperation and guilt had unwoven and her nerves with them. The chemical agent was secured in The Tempest’s over-defended warehouse, and whatever they transported for Talbot was harmless on the grand scale of things. She fiddled with the beads threaded on her prayerlocks, feeling the coarse texture of the knotted hair between her fingers, contrasting with the cool metal of the decorations.
“You know.” Sophie looped her thumbs under the suspender clips that hung loose from her waistband and fixed Talis with a crooked grin. “You’re forgetting something.”
Talis eyed her. The flutter of anxiety returned as though it had never left. “Please don’t say that. What?”
Sophie winked. “I believe you promised us dinner. You take us out of port without delivering, that’s a serious mark against your reputation as captain. We might start to question your command.”
“Hey, the last time I brought dinner home I recall you all served up plenty of insubordination. Might be safer to skip it.”
Sophie laughed, though the color rose to her cheeks. “All right, then take it out of my share. We’re not going back to eating journey rations without the memory of Kal’s hot-and-sour skewers to sustain us.”
If Talis didn’t turn down Hankirk’s money, she certainly wasn’t going to turn down Sophie’s offer. With a laugh and a nod, she put a hand between Sophie’s shoulder blades to steer her toward the Tined Spoon District.
With their crew now three Cutters, two Rakkar, and one each Bone and Yu’Nyun, Fortune’s Storm departed Subrosa and began the sinistral flight back to the border and Rakkar skies beyond.
For once, it seemed, they had all the time in the world. At least there was little for a captain to do but trust her newly upgraded ship and experienced crew to get them where they needed to go.
Talis explored the new rigging, eventually climbing the ratlines to follow the stunsail lines, then continued up to the weather deck atop the lift balloon. There, she found Sophie sitting cross-legged, wrapped in a quilted blanket, spine curving over her lap as she stared out into the skies. Talis felt her footsteps ripple through the canvas envelope beneath the top platform and bounce slightly against her as she crossed to join her engineer.
“Workable ship, huh?” Talis sat down, tucking her knees to one side and leaning on her left arm. The air was icy at cruising speeds, and the wind teased her hair and picked at the edges of her jacket.
Sophie gave her a sad smile. “Yeah, it is.”
Talis didn’t have to ask what was wrong. It wasn’t their ship. It wasn’t quite home. Hopefully this trip would help them settle in and get to know Fortune’s Storm better.
“View’s the same, no matter the hull.” She scooted closer to Sophie, and Sophie lifted the edge of the blanket for Talis to share. It was warm from her body heat, and they leaned with their shoulders propping each other up, to watch the skies in quiet.
A small pod of sirenia harassed a glow pumpkin station out in the mist. From this distance, the orange glow was diffused enough to look at, and from the way the great bioluminescent ruminants bobbed in and out, Talis knew the station’s glow keeper was trying to stave them off. If allowed, the slow, dim-witted animals would eat a hole in the rind of a glow pumpkin, and the buoyant gas inside would escape, leaving the rind to rot and the skies dark. But the beasts were incorrigible and didn’t take hints well, even with the zap of a battery-laced prod pole to make its point. The cows tonight seemed to be teaching the art of stubbornness to their calf, passing on their harassment techniques to a new generation.
Talis watched the bobbing blue, orange, and lavender lights of the creatures, noticing how the silhouettes of the sirenia were a bit like the Yu’Nyun scout ships. Round, finned, and, by all outward appearances, blank and vacant.
“Wonder what it’s like out there,” she mused. Then realizing she’d said it out loud, clarified for Sophie. “Sailing the stars like the Yu’Nyun.”
Sophie wiggled a bit, switching the way her legs were crossed and settling back against Talis. “Well, if that Bone ship is any indication, you wouldn’t get a view like this one. Can’t sit on top of that.”
“Maybe in a descent suit. A warm one.”
Sophie made a sound of amusement, which puffed from her nose as a small breath of condensation. Then she took a deep breath that came out half-sigh. She said, “I love my wood and canvas and grease-stained engines like I love breathing, but . . . Can’t pick through all the alien stuff and not wonder what it was like. They lived their whole lives out there.”
They’d opened the box from Talbot together. Looked like an overcomplicated model kit, and Sophie seemed to be as excited as if it were, and she were the child who’d get to piece it together. She had her Yu tablet out before you could say ‘short cut’ and whipped through a hundred displays until she declared it was some sort of small self-propelled drone. No weaponry, at least. It seemed the most harmless thing Talbot could have put in that crate, and Talis was thankful for it. She couldn’t make heads or tails of it, but it seemed to have gotten Sophie into an inspired, thoughtful mood.
Talis poked a hand out from the blanket to brush a tickling hair back behind her ear. “Ask Scrimshaw.”
Sophie didn’t answer, and Talis recognized the thoughtful look on her face. They sat there in peace for a while longer, until the glow pumpkin, now shrinking behind them, striped lavender along its ribs. The afternoon was winding down toward dusk.
She patted Sophie’s leg. “Come on. It’s cold up here. Let’s put on a pot of coffee and spike it till we can’t taste it.”
Sophie half-folded, half-bundled the blanket and returned it to the platform’s locker before following Talis back down the ratlines.
Talis changed, wanting something warmer after the quick foray into the winds above. She wrapped an olive-green cotton scarf around her forehead and over her ears, carefully avoiding the newest piercings, which still ached with each pulse of her blood. From the selection she bought the day before, she chose a snug-fitting black shirt that let what modest jewelry she had sparkle in contrast. Over that, the old jacket she rescued from Wind Sabre completed the look. Warm again, she followed the sound of voices to the galley.
With so many of them aboard now, they’d unfolded the leafs in the table and brought in chairs from somewhere. Sophie sat beside Scrimshaw, with Kirna on her other side. Amos sat beside her. The two Rakkar alchemists had talked Scrimshaw out of xist peg leg and were whispering over notes Kirna was making on a sheet of vellum beside the prosthesis.
Only Dug was absent from the crowd squeezed into the galley. Tisker stocked their supplies in the lockers around them while Sophie used an art kit to recreate xist ‘goste’ markings in proper paint. The air smelled of linseed oil.
The deck planks, all tightly fixed, made no noise as Talis approached in her soft-soled boots. Scrimshaw had the best view of the door and was the first to notice her.
Talis put something down on the table in front of xin. One of the flat containers of the Yu’Nyun carving tools. “Don’t know if this is a practice you want to carry forward, but we found a few of these. Of course, if you wanted to differentiate yourself from the Yu’Nyun, we can also toss these over the railing again.”
“Oh, don’t throw them out, Captain. At the very least I can use them as tools.” Sophie finished pai
nting the side of xist head and got up to clean the brush.
“Thank you, Captain. I am still exploring the possibilities.” Xe waved a hand to encompass xist makeover process. Appearances were paramount to the Yu’Nyun. The outside must reflect the inside. Scrimshaw might not want to be Yu’Nyun at all anymore but could not fully separate xist-self from their practices or preferences.
And yet xe appeared far from Yu’Nyun. Before they left Subrosa, Tisker and Dug had gone shopping on the docks to stretch Dug’s muscles and to collect supplies for the alchemists, who Talis had been unwilling to let wander free with trouble on the prowl as it was. They’d come back with new clothing and accessories for Scrimshaw, an offering to replace the grimy, germ-riddled bones. There was a bronze medallion on a leather cord looped twice around xist slender neck that looked like something Tisker would have picked out and a copper and jade hair cuff around xist upper arm that looked more Dug’s preference. Xe now wore a slim tunic, open at the sides, probably designed for the four-armed Vein anatomy. It closed only halfway up the front, exposing the gray-blue scar in xist chest above the top toggle.
Scrimshaw looked somewhere between the ‘goste’ of Subrosa that had tumbled with Talis in the alley, and a pirate from old tales. Right down to the peg leg. Kirna had traced its ill-fitting shape and noted key points to reinforce and measurements to adjust.
“You ready to tell us where you’ve been this whole time?”
Scrimshaw opened xist mouth, but Sophie objected.
“Oh, Captain, let xin eat first.”
“Eat?” Talis blinked at Scrimshaw. “You haven’t eaten yet?”
“Xe was waiting for this,” came Dug’s voice from the corridor. He held a small cage with two large chickens inside.
“I thank you, Dukkhat Kheri.”
Dug slid the cage onto the counter and opened it to grab one panicked hen by the throat, ignoring its pecking and clawing objections. He put it into Scrimshaw’s outstretched hands.
Scrimshaw held the bird for a moment, gaze cast toward it but thoughts clearly on something else.
“What’s wrong?” Talis asked. She felt as though the chicken were staring at her and wished she hadn’t sat down so close.
Scrimshaw stroked the feathers of the chicken’s neck with a little finger. “You have each referred to me as ‘xe.’ No one has spoken of me as anything but the transitional ‘ghi’ for so long, I could forget I was ever going to have the chance to become a complete person again.”
“Listen to me.” Kirna leaned forward. “People can call you whatever they want, but it’s not up to them to define you.”
“I continue to be defined by their standards.” Scrimshaw cast xist gaze downward, seeming to focus on the unmarked carapace of xist wrists.
Kirna shook her head. “The pronouns? Pronouns can be changed whenever the old ones don’t fit anymore. Yu’Nyun society seemed to understand that better than most.”
“You’ll need new pronouns, then. Nothing the Yu’Nyun would assign you.” Talis looked up at Dug, surprised at the compassion in his tone. He’d shopped for the alien, but only then did it strike Talis that Dug, who had been so suspicious of Scrimshaw years before, had welcomed xin into their fold again without question.
Scrimshaw nodded, not looking up. “I did not enjoy being an ‘it’ in Subrosa any more than ‘ghi’ under Hrrin’ru’taetin’s observation.”
Talis flushed with guilt. Upon first meeting the aliens, ‘it’ was all her brain offered her. But that was before she knew Scrimshaw. Not just played host to the alien on her ship and learned the pieces of the language. It was after Scrimshaw displayed such moral fortitude, curiosity, and will to survive.
“Any ideas?” she asked. “We could use Cutter pronouns, or Bone if you prefer.”
“Many of those pronouns are gender-based but my gender is irrelevant. I have never contemplated myself according to biological terms. There are three-hundred sixty-four Yu’keem subject pronouns to choose from, but none feel appropriate.”
Sophie shook her head. “That’s still Yu’keem, though. You need something of your own. Like your name.”
Scrimshaw was what the crew nicknamed the alien, in place of a vaguely similar but unpronounceable Yu’Nyun name. It might have been two years since anyone uttered the original.
Kirna reached out, as if to touch Scrimshaw’s arm, but then laid her hand on the table instead. “Or you could make something up that feels right to you.”
Scrimshaw adjusted the grip on the bird, pulling it closer and wrapping one arm around its body. The hen’s breathing slowed, and it seemed to settle down, even though there were still firm fingers gripping its throat.
Nodding, Tisker sat beside Sophie. “That’s right. If you’re something new, leave all the rest of that behind you. Be singular.”
They let silence linger. The brass ship’s clock, outside in the corridor, ticked patiently.
“Singular, then.” Scrimshaw’s voice was steadier now, less reedy. “‘Si’ in place of ‘Xe.’ ‘Sin’ in place of ‘Xin.’ ‘Sist’ in place of ‘Xist.’”
The words hung in the air a moment. Scrimshaw gave a firm nod to indicate sist approval, and spontaneously, the hen let out an agitated ‘bawk!’ and laid an egg in sist lap.
Kirna and Sophie burst into giggles.
“Well, that seals it,” Tisker said, retrieving the fresh egg and transferring it to the pantry.
They all sounded out the pronouns. It was only a small transition from the Yu’keem, a shift in airflow around the teeth. Scrimshaw straightened after as if a weight was lifted from sist shoulders.
And then the six of them learned how the Yu’Nyun ate.
Scrimshaw looked around the galley at them, then shrugged off sist hesitation and dipped sist head toward the struggling animal. A rigid, tubelike appendage extended from the roof of sist mouth, beyond the jaw. Sist fingers gripped the chicken’s neck and legs, and the tube pierced the skin above its shoulder.
It took sin less than five minutes to drink the thing dry. When the bird stopped struggling, Scrimshaw retracted sist feeding tube and straightened sist shoulders.
Any curiosity was more than satisfied. They exchanged looks but no one seemed willing to open their mouths for comment. They’d all witnessed it. All wished they hadn’t, by the hard lines of pressed lips and furrow of knit eyebrows. But they stayed there as si finished a second bird, so as not to reject any aspect of self that si was willing to share with them.
After, Tisker stared at the dead birds in their cage, then carried them to the garbage pail secured by the sink and began to pluck them. Talis’s stomach lurched again, but she took a steadying breath and closed her eyes. The chickens would have been blood-drained in the markets, too, before being hung and sold.
The idea of dinner was far from her mind, though.
“You mentioned the Yu’Nyun visitors in the capital earlier. Now, I know you went through something horrible, and that it’s a lot to ask. But you spent time with Hankirk and the Veritors. Will you tell us what happened?”
Scrimshaw’s eyes closed for several breaths. “I was kept in a lower level of the palace while my carapace was removed over and over again. But I did not answer Hrrin’ru’taetin’s questions.”
Sophie let out a soft sound that would have been a wail of despair had it not been so quiet. Talis registered pain in her swollen knuckles and realized she had balled her fists tight again. Dug sat very still, and his breath came in hard, deliberate puffs. Tisker and the alchemists looked to Talis as though she could travel back and make the horror of it go away.
“You were tortured for information?”
Scrimshaw dipped sist head in confirmation. “They asked after the rings, the gods, Meran, and your crew. I believe the appointment was every other week. Kept out of the sunlight, my carapace was slow to harden. Two weeks between seems like it
might have been enough time for it to reach a point where it could be peeled from the flesh underneath without tearing.”
“Scrimshaw, how did you survive it? For almost two years?”
“My options were to answer the questions, die, or endure. I chose not to provide xin with the satisfaction of the first two.”
Tisker whistled low. Talis knew she must have worn a similar look of awe and respect. She tried to restore the look of captain’s determination, but felt it lift at the edges. She thought of who was responsible for this, from the start. That helped the expression lock back into place.
“And Hankirk was there? He told me he ‘took care of you.’”
“It was his job to clean up after Hrrin’ru’taetin and visit daily to feed me and ensure that I healed properly. Sometimes he had other people perform the tasks. Sometimes he carried them out himself.”
Talis shook her head. The last person on Peridot she’d want caring for her in such a vulnerable state would be Hankirk. She shuddered.
Sophie looked on the verge of tears. “But you got away. How?”
“Hankirk. The Veritors of the Lost Codex had the ring of Silus Cutter, and he orchestrated and timed my escape as a distraction to allow him to steal it.”
The silence in the galley was so complete that the ship’s clock seemed to hesitate before ticking to mark another second.
“Hankirk has a ring?”
“To the best of my knowledge.”
Talis strung together an impressive litany of curses. “I was just there, in his gods-rotted lair, and I had no idea how close I might have been.”
