by R J Theodore
Quick on the heels of her words, a crackle wrenched through the air, and the empty space in front of their bow tore as if it were fabric. A swirling oculus of flame held back the edges of an opening through which Arthel Rak, Lindent Vein, and Helsim Breaker appeared. They towered before the airship’s bowsprit, ten times the normal height for each of their peoples.
Talis might have mustered pity for the gods, trapped for two years, defending against Meran’s influence over Nexus. Instead the three of them looked fresh and rested, bedecked in exquisite finery. They didn’t look as though they were locked in deadly battle. No, they looked as though they’d come from a banquet in some grand hall.
Arthel Rak stepped aside and held his plated hands in front of him, cupping something between them. He ignored Talis, her ship, and her crew, and kept his full attention on the rift. The fire’s breath rippled his black satin cloak, billowing it on the warm updrafts.
Helsim Breaker eased his great bulk through and took up a position on the other side. Depictions of the god always showed him dressed in simple homespun, but he was kitted out as finely as Arthel Rak, in luxurious fabric, with diamond-encrusted caps on his tusks and a shining silver cowl that moved like plate, or feathers, over his skin. He flashed silver like the scales of a fish. Not a good look for him. His gaze met Talis’s, and she sensed an odd flash of recognition that passed as quickly as it came.
Lindent Vein stepped through the rift last. His eyes were covered with a blindfold of delicate silver-threaded lace that matched the layered robes, beaded with tiny crystals. He shimmered like sunlight on the wind-tossed surface of water. When he spoke, his delicate voice was no louder than if he were a normal man standing before Talis on the deck.
“Do you speak the truth?”
It clicked into place. “Ah. So you’re why we’ve been flying in circles.”
Despite the threat of the Tempest, of terror and chaos—of which the gods must have been aware, since they apparently were in the habit of listening to whispers—they were still more concerned Talis might restore Meran with the power to overthrow them.
It was inevitable. Talis had a more-than-sneaking suspicion that Meran would piece herself back together some day. One of the remaining gods would slip up, maybe get close enough for the woman to lay a hand on them, absorb their power, the way she had Onaya’s. Then it would take her less effort than a sneeze to overpower the remaining two. So, they were hiding, sequestered away. Meanwhile the world could use their help.
Talis stepped away from the wheelhouse, crossed the deck, and climbed the forecastle to stand at the bow.
Had she met the Divine Alchemists like this a couple years ago, she might have been struck voiceless with awe, lost control of her senses, or at least her bowels. But her voice was clear and steady as she gave Lindent Vein his answer.
“I have more immediate threats to deal with. Meran couldn’t help us. Can you?”
“Will you bring the rings to us?”
Fortune’s Storm was quiet. Her lines barely whispered. The handling sails were slack. The green layers of the Nexus passage had stopped turning and rotating. Even the air seemed to wait for her answer. Only the flames of Arthel Rak’s portal still crackled and hummed.
A headache started up in her temple, but Talis resisted the urge to press her hand against it. She closed her eyes, felt her eyebrows lift, and shook her head. Instead of releasing the tirade that swelled inside her, she only said, “You, too, huh?”
“In Meran’s possession, the rings will doom us, and bring chaos to Peridot.” Lindent Vein spread his hands, all four of them, to indicate himself and his limited company. “Under our control, we can use them to restore balance and fortify our rule.”
Arthel Rak turned from the portal and made eye contact, his gaze piercing through Talis’s goggles. “Meran will ruin everything we have worked to create.”
Talis wanted to laugh. “You have her in a cage. Your rule is secured. There are more pressing things to worry about.”
Helsim Breaker moved forward to stand just behind Lindent Vein. “Without Silus Cutter, look how your people have descended into chaos. Look how the Bone are lost and confused in the wake of Onaya’s exile. We must reinforce our powers and inspire the peoples of Peridot to return to peace.”
“Enough, already!” At this point, Talis didn’t care whom she was addressing. “I’m not spending who-knows-how-much time, hunting for those damned rings so you can just inspire people! You want to inspire them? Get back out in the world, and show them their gods aren’t dead too! But right now? There’s a more catastrophic threat, and it needs someone to do something.”
Everything she’d seen so far of the gods, down to their battle tactics against the Yu’Nyun, proved to her they couldn’t work together to open a jar of brined cabbage. They could have fixed the planet when they blew it to pieces, but instead they performed a hasty patch job so they could keep experimenting. Maybe that decision shaped the world they were all accustomed to, but the fact remained their gods made a broken mess of Peridot and left the remnants to figure out a way to scrape by without their help. Passed on a solid chance at righting the mess. Not to mention how they made the planet a target for alien invaders when they set Nexus at the center of the world looking like ripe, easy pickings for anyone with a stockpile of sponge-thirsty crystal.
Talis felt her crew’s focus like clawing cats on the back of her neck. But between nearly losing Kirna to the water, getting nothing but ultimatums from Meran, and now the demands of Peridot’s gods, her patience was fully drained.
“You just want your life back, huh? I get that. There was a time that’s all I wanted. But I’ve gotten a lot less selfish since then. Maybe you should too.”
Behind her, Talis heard Sophie’s scandalized intake of breath. The portal’s edges flared, sizzling with the threat of death and destruction. Talis didn’t care.
She put her hands on her hips and took a deep breath. “Now, will you help us, or not?”
After a moment which stretched beyond reason, Lindent Vein asked, “What would you have us do?”
She tilted her head, trying to read his placid face. He was baiting her; he had to be. Well, she’d done about as much damage as possible already. Why not?
“The aliens lost their starships, and you’ve got Meran locked up. You’re the Divine Alchemists, you self-rotted bastards. I would have you get out there and do something about the payload of alien poison threatening the planet.”
But the Lord of Water and Creator of the Vein shook his head. He almost looked sad. Almost. “Our full concentration is required to maintain her confinement, as is our proximity. She will escape if we leave.”
And if Meran were freed, she’d pick another fight with the gods, and none of them would do anything worthwhile.
“Fantastic. If you’re not going to help, get the hell out of our rotting way so we can go do what you refuse to.”
They regarded her quietly for a moment. She felt the tingle on the edges of her shoulder blades of impending destruction. She wondered if they would obliterate her quickly or draw it out in a slow agony for her insolence.
Instead they stepped back, through the portal. The oculus collapsed with a rushing hiss of extinguishing flames. And in the empty space over their bow, green layers slid apart. The ocean glittered at them from the other side. The darkened barrel passage hung open in the field of turquoise, waiting for them. The stars visible beyond were those of Cutter skies. Fortune’s Storm was lined up on a course straight for Diadem.
Talis turned around, seeing the horrified expressions of her crew for the first time. Disbelief hung from their parted lips. She might have gotten them all killed, talking to the gods the way she had. At least then their part in this would be over. She was so tired, that was starting to sound like a fine option.
“Well, that was a bracing gust up the backside.” At Tisker�
��s words, the crew and their passengers relaxed. Nervous laughter sloughed off the remainder of their anxiety.
Onaya perched on the railing above him, appearing from behind the binnacle where she must’ve been skulking. Her head bobbed to reset the feathered mane over her shoulders, and Talis would swear she was embarrassed. She’d hidden from the gods, whether in shame for her ancient betrayal or in shame for her diminished existence. Either one. It didn’t pass Talis unnoticed. Onaya would ask for help from Meran, but not from her fellow deities.
“Forward,” Talis said to Tisker, was all she had the energy to say. She felt the omnipotent gaze of the gods, and of Meran, down the entire length of her spine as the ship’s engines came to life, and they pulled forward.
At the mouth of the ocean, the winds of Peridot found them again, and the ship’s movements returned to normal.
It was time to stop pretending anyone else was going to help them handle the situation. She nodded to Tisker, and he nodded back. Levers pushed and pulled under his hands, and Sophie went below to open up the valves and give the engines free rein.
It was all on them, and they’d wasted too much time already.
The towers and spires of Diadem glistened beneath them, the light of Nexus and nearby glow pumpkins reflecting back off hundreds upon hundreds of glass window panes.
The buildings crowded the moderately sized island, clustering around the legs of the royal tower rising from its center. It stood above the rest of the city, implying the same authority the Empire wished to cast across the entire territory.
The streets ran toward and away from Nexus, with avenues intersecting those. The gridline pattern of the city fell apart as it reached the round base of the palace walls and cleaved away to wash around its perimeter. There were no alleys between the buildings packed tightly against the outer gate, like babes gathered at the breast of the powerful.
On other affluent Cutter islands, broad estates stretched out rolling green blankets of landscaping around each oversized home. Here, though, leaving room to breathe long ago lost the battle against making room for rent-paying citizens. Anyone with aims on government service and the benefits that went with it attempted to implant themselves within a short stroll of the palace, and builders responded to the demand.
Fortune’s Storm approached the harbor on the leeward side of the island. The docks were crowded with foreign ships. The dignitaries who came for the joy of a coronation were trapped. Perhaps all arrested and detained. Perhaps they had all faced the same fate as the crown princess.
Talis was not eager to tether Fortune’s Storm to solid ground before she knew what forces were moving their pieces across the game board.
Onaya landed on the railing beside Talis as she stared through her spyglass, willing it to cut through the sea of buildings below them.
“I can see where your telescope cannot,” squawked the raven. She pecked at some invisible spot on the railing, leaving a triangular dent in the polished surface. “I will survey the situation.”
Talis dropped the scope from her eyes and gave the raven a hard sidelong glance. Onaya spent the trip from Nexus nursing her disappointment. Talis was glad she’d dropped the mood, but trusting her was difficult.
Still, it made sense. The city guard would fire on a ship that flew overhead, outside authorized approach lanes, while searching the city on foot from the docks on the far side was about the slowest way Talis could imagine to go after the Tempest. Onaya could wing over the streets and, with those extrasensory magenta eyes, might even know right where to find the trouble.
A large raven was not a common site in Cutter skies, but if Onaya could stay quiet and avoid being backlit, chances were fair she would raise less alarms than their Bone barque.
Still. Talis snapped the scope shut. “Why do you want to help us?”
“I do this to help Dukkhat Kheri and the rest of my children.” She tilted her head to peer at Talis. “And I do this to help you settle this mess of yours so we may progress to retrieving the rings.”
Talis pursed her lips. They would be led inexorably to the rings after this. Or they’d perish here. Either way, she was done fighting it.
She nodded, as much a promise as she was willing to express, so Onaya Bone would get her feathers in flight and go find what sign of Hankirk’s activity could be found in or around the streets of the capital.
The crew gathered to watch Onaya’s silhouette circle the island, feathers dancing on updrafts above the city. She moved slowly, in deliberate sweeps. At least she was taking the task seriously.
Yes, Talis would gather the rings next. Then she’d destroy them. And if that wouldn’t work, she’d lock them up. Hide them away and take the secret of their location to her grave, sooner or later.
Out in the pale golden light of pumpkin-lit morning, Onaya ceased her sweep. Talis caught her breath, paranoid that Onaya had sensed her intentions with those angry purple eyes. But with a beat of her strong wings, the raven rose in the air, dove again to pick up speed, then spread her wings to glide toward Fortune’s Storm where they waited beyond the perimeter of the island’s harbor.
Onaya set down onto the deck, landing with too much momentum and forced to take three or four hopping steps while beating at the air with her wings. “The back alleys along the Nexus side. They are moving large objects on carts, covered in tarps, but I recognized your man’s face. He does not even wear a disguise.”
Talis shrugged. “It probably didn’t occur to him to hide.”
Sophie stepped up beside them. “Large objects? Whatever their plan, it doesn’t sound like they’re going to inject people one at a time.”
Onaya tilted her head again, and the four eyes in her chest blinked one pair at a time.
“Bombs? To spray it in large areas?”
Sophie chewed her lip for a moment. Then she ran to the nearest all-ship receiver and called down to Amos. Talis struggled to follow their conversation from the one end of it.
When she returned, the fringe over her forehead bounced, revealing severely wrinkled eyebrows. “Amos is thinking it’s going to be released as a gas. Could be on a timer. Or if they have enough wire, they could have rigged up a trigger. But if it were me, I’d put it on a timer.”
Talis crossed to the railing with her scope, expanded it to full length, and looked out over the city, at the intersection Onaya had marked. The buildings to either side blocked her view of the street. Experience taught her the only thing about Onaya Bone to be trusted was her impulse to act toward her own goals. Cooperation, at least for the moment, was in her best interest.
Talis turned to her crew. “Then we’d better move.”
“Lifeboats, Cap?” Tisker asked her, but she shook her head.
“Faster to dock. We’ll worry about getting away later.”
“The fees,” Sophie bemoaned, “for those trumped-up wooden sticks.”
“We can spare the money. We can’t spare the time,” Talis said. Tisker was already taking them in for an approach. “Run up the signals for the harbor master, Soph.”
Giving up on her cause, Sophie ran to a locker near the aft marker line and gathered up the appropriate signals to identify their ship as non-trading, non-member, passengers-only. Without the intention to trade their cargo, no point in paying the merchanter’s fees and inviting the delay of a customs inspection.
By the time Fortune’s Storm tied off at the docks, the ship’s lower decks were battened with Amos, Kirna, and Scrimshaw safely out of sight.
Beyond the guard station at the edge of the docks, they quickened pace. The streets were as much a maze as Nexus had been, but at least the buildings didn’t shift about on divine whim. Frightened faces peered through barely opened shutters, and the streets were all but empty. Dug drew nearly as many looks as Onaya did, and in some faces a certain kind of comprehension dawned, followed closely by awe and another g
lance in the direction of the soaring raven.
Onaya Bone had come to the seat of the Empire. No parade, no honorific presentation, just a barreling chase through the darker alleys of the city.
Talis drew her revolvers, and the shutters sealed tight around them. This was Diadem, not Subrosa. Citizens did not travel the streets of the capital city armed.
But a fight was the inevitable conclusion of the day, and so her crew had all donned whatever weapons would hide beneath clothing until they could get within the city proper.
As they rounded the next corner, Onaya settled on a streetlight, leaned forward, and parted her beak to sound a harsh cough.
They pulled their hammers back and bared thirsty blades.
Chapter 44
Silent and terrifying, ceramic and aluminum canisters stood bound together with wire, mounted on a pallet, tucked into the shadow of a building. The street was clear around it, and the intersection to either side. Tendrils of trade wind cut down the avenue and whipped about their hair, tossing it up and across their faces.
The location was ideal for spreading the gas once it was released.
“Get on it, Soph. Everyone else, be ready.”
Tisker, Talis, and Dug stood facing the three approaches to the device as Sophie crouched and tentatively traced her fingers along its connected wires until her shoulders tucked between the cluster of barrels and tubes. After a few quiet moments where all they could hear was the wind and Sophie’s boots shifting against the cobblestone, she let out a satisfied “Ah ha!”
“They’re all connected with rubber hoses, and there are wires running over everything. Ah, yep. I see a pocket watch, Captain,” she yelled over her shoulder to them. “I . . . can’t . . . quite . . . reach it!” She squeezed sideways into the space to try and extend her reach. “I’ll have to take it apart without stopping the trigger they wired up to it.”
