Salvage

by R J Theodore

  Emeranth lay on the bunk in her cabin when Talis went to fetch her. Her eyes were closed. The gag was removed, and lay in a wrinkled pile on the floor, forgotten.

  “Did you . . . ?”

  Amos closed a case with a snap. “Sedated, Captain. She was a danger to herself. And, quite more pointedly, to us.”

  Emeranth’s chest rose and fell peacefully. After a bit of clean up, she finally looked the part of a child again. Innocent. Her paled lips were parted, and her hands were tucked up as close to the pillow as her arm bindings allowed.

  The ship stilled around them, momentum faded. Talis automatically adjusted her footing. They were there.

  “Come on,” Talis said, softly. “Time for her to meet Meran.”

  Amos scooped up the sleeping girl, who protested feebly but settled down again against his shoulder. Talis led them to the top deck.

  As Fortune’s Storm slowed alongside her cage, Meran opened her eyes and rose from her cross-legged position. She moved near enough to the bars to send the elements flickering and spitting with agitation.

  “Ah, the young empress.” She considered the group standing with Emeranth at the railing.

  “Onaya Bone stole Dug’s body.” Talis clutched a warded jar holding his soul crystal, lifting it slightly as if to beg Meran to restore him.

  “So, she found a new vessel? Interesting.” Meran made a casual gesture with her fingers, like rubbing crumbs away after a meal.

  Talis inhaled as her stomach and chest tightened. “There must be something you can do.”

  But Meran ignored Talis and turned her attention toward Emeranth. She beckoned with one hand, curling the fingers in. “Bring her close.”

  Tisker kept an eye on the flames, which skirted the air close to the lift balloon, letting his captain handle everything else.

  Amos stepped to the railing. Sophie and Kirna helped him with Emeranth and with his balance as they leaned over the rail to hold the little girl close. She put up no fight, though her eyes had opened. They filled with the anxiety of a wild animal as Meran locked eyes with her. Her breath came in quick little gasps. Her chest and shoulders pulsed with each one.

  Meran pushed her hand through the cage bars, and Emeranth twitched as the water and flame bars leapt and sizzled, rushing up the simula’s arm. She caressed the side of Emeranth’s face, brushing hair behind one ear, then cupped her jaw. The girl calmed; her breathing slowed.

  At the touch of Emeranth’s skin, Meran’s jaw clenched, and her face struggled to remain composed. Her fingertips turned black, then her whole hand. It spread farther up Meran’s arm. The light of her blue marks were doused from elbow to shoulder. Her other hand, still warm brown flesh, traced a shape in the air. She curled the fingers into a loose fist.

  Talis heard a quick gasp from behind her and followed Sophie’s gaze upward. Two small sparks of green separated from the wall of the chamber and sped toward them. They danced around each other, flaring, spinning, until they pulsed like a star seen through teary vision. They paused just above Emeranth’s head.

  Meran’s lips moved, and to Talis it looked as though the woman was talking to them. Then she blinked slowly, like a cat, and gave a small nod. The lights descended until they reached the girl’s forehead.

  Emeranth’s eyes opened wide. Her irises glowed fiery green with striations of white. Her lips parted with a small exhale of surprise. When Meran retracted her hand, her nails had melted into her skin.

  “You may unbind her,” Meran said, cradling her hand over her heart. The damage now extended across one shoulder, one breast, and up to the line of her jaw. Something glistened silver at the tips of her fingers as the ash flaked away.

  They lowered Emeranth to the deck. The girl’s eyes faded in brilliance as she moved farther from Meran but remained that ferocious shade of green. Once freed, she took Talis’s hand between hers and fixed her with a serene and compassionate smile. It made her look far older than her years.

  “Thank you.” She looked around at Amos, Kirna, Scrimshaw, Tisker, and Sophie. “I am grateful to you all. You have sacrificed a great deal to restore me.”

  Talis frowned. Didn’t sound much like a kid, however royal her education. “What did you do to her?”

  Meran smiled. “I told you that the souls would be corrupted. I have reinforced her spirit with that of another. One who last walked this world as the ancient king, Fiyal Tazrian. He led the Bone people through great hardships.”

  “King?” The Bone hadn’t had a monarchy in . . . Well, she didn’t know how long, but it had been generations.

  Emeranth turned to Talis. The cheeks rounded over dimples, her benevolent smile was missing a tooth on the top left. No doubt there was still a child there, but that other presence, its experience and wisdom, shared the space behind her eyes. “You may still call me Emeranth.”

  Talis held the jar back up and this time Meran did not ignore it. “If you can do that—put two souls in one body—can’t you pull Onaya’s out of Dug? If we bring him here, you can fix him. Can’t you?”

  Meran smiled, and it reminded Talis of her mother’s smile when she would smooth Talis’s hair away from her forehead and reassure her the monsters were only in her dreams. “Yes, of course. If you bring the traitor goddess to me, your friend can be restored.”

  At Talis’s side, Sophie inhaled sharply. Talis wasn’t so trusting.

  “And in return?” Talis squared her shoulders. She knew the answer. It was practically a miracle they’d gone this long in their visit without it coming up.

  “Two years, I have been waiting.” Meran’s voice was quiet, but the tone was cold steel.

  Talis huffed with cynical amusement. “Waiting to have leverage so you could force me to bring you the rings.”

  Meran only smiled, her lower cuspid teeth long and sharp.

  “Onaya Bone was going to help us find them, but she’s not likely to help us now.”

  “Indeed.” Meran frowned as though that were Talis’s fault. “She intends to reach them first.”

  She reseated herself in the middle of her cell, exuding her characteristic patience. She had waited seventy-five generations for her power to be restored to her. Despite what she said, her body language declared she could wait seventy-five more.

  Once, Talis would have let her. But now she needed to get Dug back.

  “So how do we find them without her help?” Sophie’s voice trembled.

  Meran tilted her head as though listening to something.

  “Hankirk had one, but I no longer sense it. It is not destroyed, or its released power would have returned to me.”

  One option Talis had considered was destroying the rings. Her stomach flipped at Meran’s casual remark.

  Meran seemed not to notice Talis’s reaction as she concentrated on sensing the others. “The other three, though . . .” She pointed her fingers in several directions. To one side. “Arthel Rak’s.” Over her shoulder. “Onaya Bone’s.” Behind her. “Helsim Breaker’s.”

  Talis frowned. “That’s not very specific.”

  “You have made allies. Those who can aid you in the search.”

  “Who?”

  “We will, Captain.” Amos gripped Kirna’s hand and stood tall.

  Meran nodded. “Among others. You have no shortage of friends, Talis.”

  A short list of names came to mind, but Talis was more concerned with the hidden truth behind Meran’s posturing. “What you’re saying is you don’t know where they are.”

  The simula’s shoulders shrugged in a noncommittal gesture. “As you return them to me, the veils obscuring my senses will lift.”

  Tisker cleared his throat. “How many of these veils have to lift before you can overthrow Arthel Rak, Lindent Vein, and Helsim Breaker?”

  Bless him, I forgot about that. Eventually Meran would be strong enough
to escape her cage, toss the gods to flotsam or wherever dead gods went, and go look for the rings on her own. Her crew would be free to go off about their own lives in whatever was left of the world.

  Or they’d be disposable. Even now, Meran only helped them because of the service she needed them to perform. If she was done with them before she restored Dug, they’d have no currency left to argue the point.

  “That remains to be judged.” Meran picked at one of the beads in her knotted hair, and it felt as much an answer for Talis’s unspoken question as for Tisker’s. “I have apparently inspired them to work together. United, they are stronger than they were alone. I expected one more ring would be enough to overpower them. I am no longer certain.”

  Unsure whether to be relieved or unsettled, Talis struggled to keep her focus off the ring in their hull that very moment.

  Dug. She focused on Dug. Meran was the one with the complete comprehension of Nexus and how to manipulate it. Helsim Breaker, Arthel Rak, and Lindent Vein were not exactly happy with Talis at the moment, and if she began to work with Meran in an open search for the rings, she could probably count the gods among her enemies.

  Heretical as it was, their best chance was to throw in with the newcomer. For now.

  “There is one ring Onaya Bone will not be able to reach right away.” Meran slid her unmarked hand down the blackened right side of her body. “Her own. A white brass and copper band with a flame-tailed raven encircling a ruby zoisite cabochon and a hidden compartment. It was not lost in the Cataclysm as the others were. I learned this from her mind when I reclaimed the power she stole. In her paranoia and deep mistrust of even her fellow alchemists, she hid it.

  “Outside the atmosphere of Peridot, a satellite circles another planet that shares our star. It is there, out of reach of anyone bound by the need of lungs to breathe. Without help, she cannot hope to claim it. But she is already working to resolve that difficulty.”

  Neither could Talis, then. “So they are trying to build starships. Sophie, you were right.”

  Sophie did not seem especially pleased by the confirmation of her theory.

  Meran nodded. “Speak to your most resourceful friends. The other rings must be claimed. Do not waste time. Peridot needs my help, now more than ever.”

  “She is right.” Emeranth—or it was Tazrian, maybe—put a hand on Talis’s arm. “There is little benefit in delay. Life’s first duty is to lessen the pain of others. We must do what we can.”

  Talis chuckled at the irony, then smiled. “I think I’ve heard that before.”

  If Talis begged her leave of Meran before the simula sensed that she was hiding Silus Cutter’s ring, so much the better. She had to figure out how to get Meran to restore Dug without turning over the rings. In the meantime, every minute spent squinting against the glare inside Nexus got her no closer to the answers.

  “And in hard times, we must try to do more.” Talis nodded to the restored empress. “We’ve all got work to do.”

  The winds swept over Peridot’s scattered islands in predictable paths. Shipping and smuggling lanes alike had developed around these specific currents, as reliable as the glow pumpkins’ light cycles.

  So the gas spread just as predictably, across most of Cutter skies by the time Fortune’s Storm and crew navigated back to civilization. Where civilization was no longer so civil.

  Amos and Scrimshaw worked together, around the clock, to use the Nexus samples to reverse the effects. They promised they were on the verge of a breakthrough, but each day, when Kirna forced them to stop and rest, they had no good news to report.

  The journey back felt longer than it should have, despite their haste. The tension aboard the ship was as thick as mud. Made only more powerful by Dug’s absence. Her oldest friend. The one to whom she would have confessed her anxieties in the quiet moments underway. Now all she had was his soul preserved in a jar, stowed carefully in the safe of her cabin.

  The crew ate silently and held minimal, subdued conversations about the ship’s operation.

  Sophie became perpetually distracted. She cut her rest shifts in half and took up drawing again, designing something Talis couldn’t interpret as she watched from across the galley. The silence felt too rigid to break, so she didn’t ask. The pencil scratched feverishly across the paper. Whatever Sophie was at, it was as much to work her own way through the mess.

  One of eight children, Talis remembered. Sophie’s family was out there, scattered on one or more colony ships. The enormous beasts of sky were practically islands in their own right, too big and heavy to do more than drift on the trade winds. By now, they could be floating war grounds.

  When something was wrong, Sophie needed to fix it. When she had her solution, she’d bring the plans to Talis. Not before.

  Talis had family, too, somewhere. When she left home, she didn’t look back, so she had no idea where the winds had taken them since. When her brother’s letters found her at various outposts, she’d ignored them. Far as she ever gave it any thought, her family was her crew and her ship. But knowing the danger out there in the skies and what violence would be unlocked in anyone who crossed the wrong breeze, she worried about more than just Dug. Her brother, Cullen. Her mother, Euphemia. Out there in the dark, and beyond her help.

  Even Tisker struggled to keep up his positive and carefree attitude. Entire hours passed without him attempting to make a joke and disrupt the shoulder-knotting anxiety. There was something guarded in his expression Talis hadn’t sensed in years, from when there was still the risk he’d have to spend the rest of his life in Subrosa.

  They all had people to worry about, individuals to represent the whole of Peridot’s populations now out there, unprotected against the miasma Hankirk had unleashed. Even if the alchemists and Scrimshaw could counteract the solution, there were still so many people for whom it was too late. Nexus was filling with corrupted souls, and the islands were filling with rampaging people. It was foolish to hope many would survive to have their souls returned, reinforced or otherwise.

  And, somewhere in the darkness of Peridot’s skies, Onaya Bone was planning her next move.

  Talis had a responsibility to Dug, but she also had a responsibility to the entire world. What other ship’s crew was so equipped to find the rings and give Meran the power to fix what had happened?

  Rosa was not untouched by the gas. The surface city was alive with the dull roar of violence and chaos. Shipwrecks piled against the shore, run aground by rabid crews. Their hulls splintered and lines tangled on the damaged docks, and on top of each other. Anchor chains drooped from other ships where they grappled the edges of the island. Deflated or burning lift envelopes adding to the weight dragging at them.

  Dipping below the prime air currents to angle Fortune’s Storm toward Subrosa, the tattoos at the base of their throats dimmed until they seemed only to be the dark green of old ink work. Still, Talis didn’t relax until she saw wary faces in the watch portals. Subrosa was relatively untouched.

  Fortune’s Storm approached the bay door protecting the inner docking berths. The way the ships above had slammed into open docks, no way Talis wanted to risk potentially being rammed while they were tied up in port. They rang their ship’s bell several times, in deliberate and coded patterns, until finally a dock foreman appeared on the catwalks outside the enormous hatch.

  He squinted at them, doubt on his features, and his muscles set to run until Talis called out in clear and comprehensible Common Trade.

  “We’re safe,” she called. “Let us dock us inside to avoid the wrecks above!”

  His eyes went wide. Maybe he thought Subrosa was alone in the world. With an inarticulate cry, he scuttled back into the main structure, and a moment later, the chains along the door engaged, and it rolled back to allow them entry.

  The dock manager wouldn’t let them settle any business until he got word of the outside sk
ies. What happened. How far the gas spread. If there was a cure.

  Talis’s news was more valuable than any cargo she might have brought with her. Hells, if she’d brought cargo to sell, she’d have found herself few takers in such an anxious market.

  But the news that Empress Emeranth was alive and well and ready to help Cutters who had survived the gas’s effects sent a ripple of relief through the city.

  They set the Empress up in the warehouse where the Tempest had schemed all this trouble. Where someone found a note addressed to Talis. In Hankirk’s hand, it read: I waited for you. I did.

  She grabbed Sophie’s lit cigarette and set the note on fire, watched it turn black and curl, then stomped it out.

  Chapter 48

  Emeranth had headaches. There was a fuzzy part of her, a veil from behind which another person was there. Fiyal Tazrian. It wasn’t just like when there was someone on the other side of a door. She could sense all of him, and more. Like there were many lives to tell her about. But it was too much, all at once. The more she tried to listen, the harder it was to understand, and the more overwhelmed she felt, knowing her soul was damaged and this other soul was there because she wasn’t whole on her own.

  Meran had shared a secret with her, from mind-to-mind, when they had touched.

  “Your corruption is a blight on all it touches, including Fiyal Tazrian. The bond with him will give you a chance to do good, but it will not last. Do what you can, while you can.”

  It was easier not to think about it. To focus on other things, outside herself.

  She was no longer in Diadem, but she was still the Empress. Someone found her a warehouse and people lined up as they had at the palace. Most of them didn’t have specific problems, they just wanted to meet with her, to be reassured. Some brought her gifts. Money, and clothes, and whatever they had to part with. She found volunteers to help her redistribute it to people who needed it.

  Sometimes people did have real problems that needed solving. In those moments, she was glad to have Tazrian with her. He was as wise as Faw’n, and as fair as Maw’n. He always made people feel better, even when he wasn’t able to fix their problems right away.