by R J Theodore
“Hey,” she said. She searched for something helpful to say, but she was about as good at comforting words as a cat was at minding its own business. “That sounds pretty fatalistic.”
Scrimshaw looked up at her. “I apologize if I seem morose, Captain. Quite the opposite, in fact. Much is behind me, and I am willing to let it remain there. I await the work that comes next with great excitement. Sparing a quiet moment to rid myself of these reminders, of course. I indulge myself.”
They heard the leg’s wood spit and pop as the flames found it and destroyed the last of the moisture in its cells.
“You think you’ll feel better after you’ve molted properly?” She put her arm out to lean an elbow against the bricks that edged the open hearth. Something about the motion made the conversation more private, though anyone in the room could listen if they strained to hear. She thought of the time when Scrimshaw would have never discussed anything so personal to the Yu’Nyun experience. Si had since left the culture behind, though si was stuck with the anatomy.
Scrimshaw twisted the walking staff in place. “Perhaps. I always felt different after a molt, and I imagine it will erase the sense of displacement that came from having my molts forced upon me. I have no idea what a proper molt will be like with a scar such as this. Perhaps there will be greater difficulty with the ecdysis—the shedding—than usual. Perhaps pieces will stick to the edges and never properly come away.”
“How many times have you molted?”
Si looked to her. “Thirty-three times, naturally, as I grew. Twice, since I left adolescence and entered society.”
Talis had not expected it to be so much, for some reason. “And you carved yourself all over again, each time?”
Scrimshaw nodded. “Each molt was a chance for self-improvement. For my first, my adornment earned me the position of a clerk. By my fourteenth, I had studied the works of many different artists and earned better standing for my subsequent work. The skilled artisan linguist you met was the highest placement I achieved.”
Si touched the scar visible between the halves of sist tunic front. The edges were bumpy and irregular along the edge of the darker scar tissue.
“I lost count of how many layers Hrrin’ru’taetin took. Now, I do not know what to become or how to design myself. Personal ambition seems meaningless without the culture that demanded it.”
“That’s assuming you have to carve at all. But if you decide you want to, couldn’t you just carve what you like?” She was out in the skies without hot air, attempting to talk about any Yu’Nyun subject with sin like she knew what she was saying. Her head flooded with questions, built-up years of curiosity, but she forced them aside for a more appropriate time and tried to focus on being a friend instead.
But si nodded with an energy that was not there a moment before as though Talis said something useful. “Like your inked skin.”
She smirked. “There are those of us that will tell you their tattoos are exceptionally unique and meaningful.”
She realized she was rubbing her sleeve, over the brand that marked her as an agent of Onaya Bone. Meran had offered to remove it once, but by the time Talis realized what a selfish child Onaya Bone could be, Meran was too absorbed in her own endeavors to make the offer again. Since then, the brand had proven its worth. And the design had grown on her. Clearly, it was not the first brand made by the High Priestess of Onaya Bone. It healed clean, and now it stood pale pink against the golden tones of Talis’s skin.
She pulled her hand away and rested it on her hip. “And then there are those who get drunk and pick out a pretty picture from a sheet on a wall to surprise themselves with the next morning.”
“You talking about me over there?” Tisker called from behind them. He lounged sideways on the bench at the table, his boots off and his feet up near the heat vent, revealing a hole in his sock.
Talis shot him a grin and gave a laugh. “Case in point. Scrimshaw, has Tisker ever shown you the swarthy sailor on his chest?”
Tisker tossed a boot at her. She’d have playfully evaded it, but that close to the chimney vent she caught it and chucked it back at him. He ducked, and it sailed past, hitting the opposite bulkhead, beneath the expanse of glass.
“He’s all right,” Tisker said, relaxing again and rubbing a hand on his chest. The top of the sailor’s head was a soft black outline that showed at the collar as the fabric wrinkled. “Just needs a touch up. He’s been with me a long time, you know.”
Talis winked at Scrimshaw. “Don’t insult his sailor.”
Scrimshaw looked back and forth between them. Si knew them well enough by now to register the humor, but had yet to learn how to join in. Talis still hadn’t heard sin laugh. And she knew what a Yu’Nyun laugh sounded like. The captain of Scrimshaw’s previous ship once found humor in their conversations, but Scrimshaw was far more reserved than sist captain had been. Even decked out in restrung necklaces of bones and metal pips. Si’d gone wild, on the scale of Scrimshaw, but remained far more polite company than Talis and Tisker on any night.
“Captain Talis,” Scrimshaw said. Then stopped. Sist fingers played along the edge of the mantle as though it were the keyboard of an organ.
“What is it?” She put an encouraging hand on sist shoulder, then moved her thumb clear of the mouse skull she’d accidentally brushed against.
Si stood as upright as si could while relying on the walking stick in the absence of a right foot. “My molting process will be very dangerous for me. I believe it would be unwise to attempt it aboard an airship. Professor Amos has offered to allow me to escape my exoskeleton in his facility when our mission is complete. After which, I have been invited to stay and work with him on the neutralizing agent and other projects. He has promised me full access to his library and resources. We have a lot of information to offer each other.”
Tisker overheard and sat up, listening intently.
She swallowed and dropped her hand back to her side. There was a part of her that had been really hoping to witness Scrimshaw in action, learn what survival instinct had kept sin safe from Diadem’s streets to the alleys of Subrosa. But now she suspected si hoped to molt that version away, as well.
Scrimshaw was a scholar. Si loved language and was so good at it that sist Yu’Nyun accent, made with a mouth that could not form the correct shapes for their words, was almost imperceptible except at a whisper. Sist people may have wanted to destroy the planet, but she knew they drew in all knowledge they uncovered like a desperate fish in a puddle of water.
Of course si’d want to stay with the alchemists. And of course Amos and Kirna would want sin to tell them everything the Yu’Nyun had learned about Peridot, alchemy, and The Five.
It made sense. But Talis was surprised at the level of disappointment she felt. Speechless, she nodded at Scrimshaw, patted sin on the shoulder again, and moved away from the fireplace.
For a while, she existed at the periphery of Tisker and Sophie’s banter and as Kirna returned with the adjusted prosthesis for Scrimshaw. She excused herself after a bit. She needed to feel the wind in her seams and clear her mind.
But when she opened the door leading back to the open deck, Onaya was perched on the topmost railing there, combing her feathers through her beak.
When one of her six eyes caught the movement, Onaya hoisted her wings, shook them out, and settled herself back down. All the feathers lay just-so along her body, glistening black, green, and purple.
“I’m coming with you,” she said. Her voice sounded more like the raven she’d become than Talis remembered.
“And just where is it do you think that we’re going?”
“I know where.” She spread her wings, gliding down from the upper railing to land on the deck before Talis could slam the door closed in her face. “Even if you do not.”
Talis laughed brusquely. “That’s an interesting angle to try a
nd pry the information loose. Now we tell you where we’re going, and you can decide what cryptic way to explain the trouble it will lead to.”
“Which of us is more predictable? Me or you?”
“Let me ask you again: where is it you think we’re going?”
“Nexus.”
Talis laughed, loud and genuine, in surprise and derision.
“No.” At last she regained a bit of her composure. “No, we’re not going to Nexus. We’re not going to get your damned rings. We just got back in the skies after the last time I made the mistake of bringing you a ring.”
Onaya clacked her beak once and propelled herself through the open door with one large beat of her wings, landing on the table and scuttling the crew leaning there.
“Oh!” Kirna leapt up from the table and nearly tripped over the second row of benches behind her. “Is that Onaya Bone?”
Tisker laughed and put a hand between her shoulder blades to propel her toward the raven. “Go on then, she doesn’t bite.”
Talis said, “Yes, she does,” at the same moment that Onaya Bone said, “Yes, I do.”
Well, at least they agreed on one thing. Talis unlaced and peeled her boots off, settling into the corner where the table met the warm brick chimney.
Kirna eyed them both with a nervous giggle. “It’s an honor, ma’am,” she said to the raven, and made a small, ridiculous curtsy. “I’ve been studying your alchemical techniques my whole life.”
“I’ll have to remember that when I get my powers back,” the raven said coldly. She clacked her beak again for emphasis.
Talis could be civilized and introduce the Rakkar alchemists to the very woman who once would have crushed them like insects for their practices. But she didn’t feel very civilized. And Onaya didn’t act civilized. Tisker slid a cup of rum in front of the former goddess.
Kirna slipped back onto the bench, as though she expected it to come aflame at a moment’s notice. She was having trouble keeping her mouth closed, and her eyes were going to be red from the strain in a few more moments of staring so hard.
“Be nice.” Talis resisted the urge to throw something at the bird. “If anyone would even be able to help you get your powers back, it’s Kirna and her professor.”
“I would be happy to try,” Kirna said, awed but eager.
“Meran could do it,” Onaya said. Talis could have sworn she was trying to be dismissive of the alchemists in the deckhouse with her.
Tisker laughed. “Sure, she could. But I don’t think she likes you much more than the Captain.”
Onaya Bone drank more, instead of responding.
Amos shifted uncomfortably on the bench. “Captain, now might be a good time to have a discussion about the Yu’Nyun solution.”
Talis raised an eyebrow. Not really a conversation she wanted to have in front of the former Bone goddess. “Sure?”
“We have exhausted what we may learn about the alien solution from this end of the equation.”
Onaya made a chortling noise and returned her focus to scooping more rum down her throat.
Talis began to wish she had stayed in her cannonball-infested cabin. “And which end is that?”
“The solution breaks down the connections with quintessence. It is designed for Nexus energy, specifically for the Nexus energy in fully sentient natives of this world.”
Talis made a face and took a swig of her own rum. “And you haven’t exactly got fully sentient specimen to test.”
Amos nodded, looking both relieved and anxious.
“So, either you want some fully sentient specimen to test, in which case your morality is on even more turbulent footing than I suspected, or you’re about to ask me . . .”
“To go directly to the source.”
“And there it is.” Talis massaged the bridge of her nose with one hand and held out her empty cup in the other. Tisker leaned forward to oblige her with a refill.
“We could collect a sample large enough to conduct ten years’ worth of research, without harming any living beings.”
“And while you are there, you could make Meran return me to whole.” Onaya adjusted her wings, pulling her head back as if preparing to be restored right that moment.
“Were you somehow not paying attention the last time we danced with Meran?” Talis threw back the rum and held the cup out again. “No one makes Meran do anything.”
Tisker leaned forward to pour the refill, then muttered something about empty bottles and wandered out of the deckhouse.
“Can I ask about Meran?” Kirna had her hand half raised as though she were a child in a colony school. “My whole life, I’ve studied alchemy. But Meran, and . . . I can’t believe I never looked closer at Nexus. We all just assumed—or anything I ever read assumed for us—Nexus was something The Divine Alchemists created to hold the world in place. It’s as if a whole new field of study has opened up, and I don’t even know where to start.”
Onaya couldn’t pass up the opportunity to snipe. “Well, the Rakkar do live under rocks.”
“Shut it!” Talis took a page from Tisker’s book and tossed a boot at her. Onaya beat the air, her full wingspan stretching nearly across the width of the two tables. She’d had enough of Talis’s target practice, even if it was poorly aimed and her own rotted fault for being rude. She knocked her cup off the table with one of her nasty taloned feet, spilling the generous pour of rum and sending the metal cup spinning across the floorboards. Then she flew out of the still-open door, trying to look as dignified as possible while making abbreviated flaps of her too-large wings in the small space.
An exclamation of surprise rose from the weather deck; then Dug and Sophie appeared with a tray of bowls and a pot of something that steamed in the chill of the open air.
“Were you two fighting again?” Sophie asked, shrugging and tossing her head back to indicate the departed raven. She grinned. The question was rhetorical.
Tisker appeared behind them a moment later with a fresh, sealed bottle of rum.
Dug shot Talis a look, then his gaze slid to the bottle of rum in Tisker’s hands—they had only opened the first bottle the evening before—and, finally, to the spinning metal cup on the deck.
Talis screwed up her face at him. “Give me a little credit. I didn’t drink it all or throw the cup at her. It was a boot. Your goddess isn’t suited to polite company.”
Tisker left the room again to get towels, handing off the rum bottle to Dug.
Kirna gazed at them in wonder. The look was plain enough to read, even in her less animated features—Talis knew she treated the former goddess like a petulant child. But it wasn’t scandal that crossed the Rakkar woman’s face. Kirna’s world had just opened up in front of her. All the books on alchemy couldn’t give her the life experience this crew already had, and they were only getting started. Talis knew that look. Kirna had a taste of the wide-open skies and she wanted more.
Talis shook her head in answer to the obvious question. The rum was making her sense things that couldn’t be there. Kirna probably wanted to sail the open skies about as much as Talis wanted to be cooped up underground.
She held out her cup and didn’t miss the glance Sophie exchanged with Dug before he poured her another serving. He was stingy with it, just a finger of liquid. She swirled it in the cup, thoughtful. Compromise between captain and first mate.
“Meran,” Talis said, in answer to the earlier question, “is about as pissed off as I’d be if somebody split me into ten pieces and pretended I didn’t exist for two thousand years.”
Dug added, after inhaling deeply, “Meran was the soul of the planet, whom Onaya Bone and the others consumed and confined. They stole her alchemical powers for themselves, one each, and divided her soul across five rings. One of these rings, we retrieved and sold to the Yu’Nyun. It was given to one of the simula, which came alive and
became Meran.”
“Dug,” Talis drawled, raising her glass to him. “I do believe that’s the first time I’ve heard you admit it was the gods’ doing in the first place.”
He gave her a dark look. “I have had time to think about the situation.”
Talis took a rationed sip of her rum. If that was all Dug was going to allow her under his supervision, she wanted it to last. “And according to Scrimshaw, Hankirk has another one of those rings. I can only imagine the trouble he’ll want to get up to.”
Dug seated himself next to Kirna on the bench, and she scooted aside to leave polite room between them.
“I do not like to think that the Veritors of the Lost Codex were correct, but by Meran’s revelation, The Five had the option to restore Peridot in the aftermath of Cataclysm, instead of reshaping it. Perhaps life as we know it is an affront to nature.”
“It’s certainly an affront to Meran,” Tisker said, hearing enough of the conversation as he returned with a pile of small cotton towels nabbed from the lockers near the head.
Sophie placed her tray on the table and took the lid off the large serving dish. The smell of savory herbs drifted on the steam escaping the bowl. As Tisker wiped up Onaya’s mess, she said, “So Meran wants the other rings. She didn’t say what she’ll do when she’s got them all.”
“Overthrow Arthel Rak, Helsim Breaker, and Lindent Vein,” said Talis. “I don’t doubt it. Assuming she hasn’t done it already.”
Sophie handed out bowls of hot soup, then paused before serving herself. “Don’t you think we’d know?”
Talis rubbed at the brand on her arm, finally giving in to the mental itch. Onaya Bone told her about Silus Cutter’s death almost a full year after it happened. No one knew then. “Maybe. But only if she started making changes.”
