Responsibility of the Crown

by G Scott Huggins

“That flying thing? Yes, I suppose. It’s Consortium, isn’t it? But if it could’ve hurt us, it would’ve done so already.”

  “I think it already has.”

  “How?”

  “Because the Consortium has a sorcerous device they call a radio.” There was no need to explain that it wasn’t sorcery, but Tairen would understand that better than the real secret of the radio. It took some time, but eventually he understood.

  “They can talk across the air?”

  “As easily as I speak to you now,” said Azriyqam. “They’ll have told the submarine my brother spoke of where to find us. And it will, before the sun sets tomorrow. The Consortium needs no wind to sail the Ocean.”

  Tairen’s mouth gaped open.

  “You begin to see it now, don’t you, Water-Captain?” said Elazar, gently. “Haraad could have no reason to be relieved to see the Consortium if Ulzhe was telling the truth. After all, why would the Consortium give him treasure in return for a dead man? But if we are telling the truth and the Consortium is your enemy, again, why should Haraad be relieved? He would only be watching death come for him as well. Unless, of course…”

  “The Consortium has promised to save him and those he selects,” said Azriyqam.

  “They have to. Otherwise, who will be left to bear witness to our kingdom’s dastardly act of piracy on this Century Ship?”

  “No wonder he forbade me to come here,” Tairen said. “But we’ll all see what they…” Tairen started, then he went gray. “Oh. Oh, I see.”

  “He won’t be able to leave any of you alive,” finished Elazar. “Only the ones he trusts.”

  “You believe us, now,” said Azriyqam. It wasn’t a question.

  “I do. Dead and absent gods help me, but I do.” He rose shakily to his feet. “I’m putting a stop to this. Tselah, raise a flag of truce. I’ll carry it out myself. I’ll tell them all what we have to do. Haraad will be relieved, I swear it.”

  Tselah nodded, and Azriyqam felt her heart lift, just a little. It wouldn’t solve their problems. The Consortium was still out there, but it felt good to know that Haraad would not get away with his crimes, whatever happened.

  * * *

  Azriyqam looked down from the forecastle as Tselah escorted Tairen out of its gates. Her neck itched as she passed in front of the forecastle’s dismounted chase armaments, now jury-mounted in the rear-facing windows and loaded with grapeshot. The first of Haraad’s troops to charge would be blown to bloody mist by the shrapnel when they were fired. Perhaps it was the only reason they hadn’t already attacked.

  The early afternoon sun boiled above the cloudwall like a drop of liquid gold. Before her, one of the younger rebels carried a white flag. Beyond the barricade and the deck guns, Haraad waited before a line of his own sailors, all his picked men, with his captains flanking him. Azriyqam studied his face. His eyes were locked on Tairen. It wasn’t hatred there; it was contempt. It was familiar. It was the way he had always looked at her.

  Tselah called out in a voice pitched to carry. “We return Water-Captain Tairen, as free to go as he was to come.”

  Tairen clasped her hand and turned toward the line of men. He walked about ten paces, and raised a hand in greeting. Sailing Master Elam opened his mouth. Then Haraad spoke. He was too far away for Azriyqam to hear him. It was a short command.

  Five of Haraad’s sailors shoved through the line of captains and leveled their short guns. Only Sailing Master Elam reacted. He leapt on the back of one, shoving his gun skyward. The other four muskets spoke in a ripple of fire, and Water-Captain Tairen went down, his body whipped around by the impact of the heavy, lead bullets.

  Haraad stepped forward. Grabbing Elam by the collar, he tore the older man from his bravo’s back, slamming him to the deck with sickening force. Without letting go, he hauled him back up and brought his left hand up with a razor-sharp dirk pressed into the soft skin of his neck.

  “I’m the High Captain of the Century Ship Ekkaia!” he roared. “No other captains or officers will stand before me. Any who say a word against my orders in time of mutiny are mutineers and they and their families will pay the price of blood to wash away their crimes!” Haraad’s eyes were alight with an unholy fire, and the other captains stood staring at the leveled guns of Haraad’s men. Haraad continued, “It won’t be long now until our friends from the Consortium arrive and then this mutiny will be finished. We don’t treat with mutineers. Or negotiate with them. Especially in defiance of the high captain’s orders. The traitors who would steal our ship will be punished, and we’ll return to the Grove with a treasure. And with an alliance that will make every one of us a Tree Lord! To me, all true men of the Ship!”

  A rising growl from Haraad’s supporters filled the air.

  Azriyqam’s gut contracted to see how many joined him. She’d underestimated Haraad. Had believed that he could not truly have so much support from among the Ship simply because of the hatred she felt for him. But there were many young men on the Ship, she saw, who’d been born during the voyage and had grown up chafing under the rule of old, cautious men like Elam, Tairen, and the old captain. This voyage was their parents’ creation, unless they seized this moment and made it theirs. That was what Haraad offered them. A straight shot to glory and power.

  “Go back to your quarters,” said Haraad.

  He wasn’t yelling, now. He had never sounded more like a high captain. It was like the legends of undead ghosts, who imitated all the qualities of living persons, except for a soul. “Go back to your quarters or back to your posts. It will all be over sometime tomorrow.”

  A fire awoke in Azriyqam’s heart, like the fire Haraad was plotting to set in the wood of the Century Ship. Like the fire she had seen climbing about her in her nightmares. Like the cold, watery fire that had burned her lungs in the depths of the Theurge.

  “Haraad!” She leaned out of the window, heedless of the danger of a topman’s bullet. “You’ll never escape this Ship! I’ll see to it, Haraad! You’ll never be rid of me! I will make you face your Responsibility if I have to burn with you!”

  Haraad found her and he gave a derisive laugh. “You tried that once before,” he said. “I’ve got a pretty scar to show for it, like any other bitch might give when she bites! Care to try again, bat-freak? I’ll give you one that’s more than a match!” He raised his dirk from Elam’s throat. Low laughter surrounded him, and he strode off.

  Azriyqam’s vision blurred with tears. He will burn.

  * * *

  “I cannot let him escape!” Azriyqam shouted in the stillness of the cabin.

  Zhad gaped at her. “Who said anything about him escaping? We’re talking about you! Well, us.” He had the grace to look abashed.

  “If we do that, we lose all chance to stop the Consortium’s plans.”

  “Is this about stopping the Consortium or about stopping Haraad? We can dismount the winddrivers and leave on the lifeboats. One to a boat. We can take witnesses with us, Tselah and as many others as we can fit aboard.”

  “And leave the rest to be slaughtered?”

  “You heard them out there. Most of them would rather follow their own murderer to their graves than listen to freaks like us. Freaks who are following the laws they taught us in hopes of saving them. Tselah threw you out of her family and as good as pinned you in that cell for the past eight years. What do you owe her or her followers?”

  “My life,” she said. “Elazar’s life.”

  Zhad gave an exasperated snort.

  “The success of your plan is doubtful, Zhad,” said Elazar. “If we escaped, as you suggest, the Consortium would quite rightly claim that we weren’t witnesses to their supposed attack. If we stayed to witness it, they’d hunt us down and kill us from the air. Even if we, by some miracle, managed to escape, then there would still be few enough witnesses for the Consortium to dismiss them as traitors to their own people, bribed by the kingdom.”

  “I thought I was the blind one, but I swear by the dead a
nd absent gods I’m the only one who sees clearly there is no hope. In an hour, the sun will fade. The smoke signal we’re sending will be all but invisible, and then all we have to do is wait for the dawn to come and for the submarine to burn us alive.”

  Burn us alive. Was this what her Foresight had been telling her? That she was fated, inexorably, to burn with this Ship? For the kingdom she could not save?

  It came to her suddenly, like a leaden net dropped over her wings and shoulders, that this is how her mother must have felt. As though she were seeing it with her own eyes, she pictured a lonely, desperate dragon bearing an infant child in her talons, and the far greater burden of her Foresight that had warned her of that moment as she spotted the mote of the Century Ship on a course to lightward. Her daughter’s only hope, she thought.

  What was it Senaatha had said? The Foresight was a good guard, but a bad guide. Did that mean that Zhad was right? That the burning of Ekkaia was inevitable? That they should run? It sounded wise, but it felt wrong.

  If the Foresight was not her guide, what was?

  Senaatha’s words came back to her. “Avnai has decided what to do and he is the Crown’s heir. You must decide whether to follow him or not.”

  She looked within herself and saw the ugly truth. She could do this now. Kill everything Avnai had given his life for. She could force him to take his life back. All it would cost was everything he had wanted to fight for. No one would blame her, maybe not even Avnai. But it would all be gone, and she would be the cause.

  He had trusted her with everything. Made it her responsibility. She choked out a bitter laugh when she realized that.

  Slowly, she rose. She realized Senaatha was wrong. Her Foresight could be a guide after all.

  “No,” she said. “We will not escape. We came here to save the kingdom. Not Ekkaia, but the kingdom. Our home, Zhad.” Her voice softened. “You don’t want to burn it, too, do you?”

  “Of course not. But what choice have we?”

  “We set the fire ourselves,” Azriyqam answered. “One last guiding fire in the darkness.”

  * * *

  The overcast was thin, seen from the top of the Forecastle. Behind her, the fire in the pit blazed high. All day long, it had burned with a thick, gray smoke. Now, dry wood was piled high, lighting the front of the Ship like a beacon. It could be seen for miles, and tens of miles, and the heat warmed her back in the cool night air.

  But it was not visible for far enough.

  Azriyqam fingered the jars of lamp oil hanging from her harness, four of them. They were tiny, but they would have to do. She was alone. The others had helped as much as they could, but none of them could come with her. Elazar’s wing was nowhere near healed, and Merav was too exhausted to fly.

  High up above her, on the bare foremasts, some of Tselah’s men had already fixed three huge bowls full of lamp oil as a makeshift, open torch. It blazed in the darkness, but there were five more rows of masts running aft. Nearly a mile of Century Ship, stretching back into the darkness, hung with canvas full of wind trying to hold them back.

  Carefully, she stretched her wings. She ran forward, off the edge of the forecastle.

  Her wings sliced through the night, and she beat the air for altitude. She had no idea how many pairs of eyes from Haraad’s part of the ship would be looking forward. Both he and Tselah had posted guards near the edge of the foredeck, of course, but she hoped that their eyes would be drawn to the blaze of light atop the forecastle, so their dazzled eyes would be unable to see her, a mote rising against the night. Keeping ahead of the Ship’s passage while climbing was a strain on even her trained muscles. Slowly, the Ship slid by below her. She had hoped to be higher by now and then the rising air of the bonfire caught her wings.

  The updraft hoisted her skyward with more violence and power than the thermals she’d used from the kitchens when she’d saved Avnai from the Cage but like that long-ago night, there was no cry of alarm. No echo of gunfire. She didn’t fear that. The shot that had hit Elazar had been more bad luck than anything else, and any sniper targeting her wouldn’t be shooting down at the broad surface of her wings. But she still had no margin for error. In silence, she glided down to the top spar of the foremainmast’s moonraker.

  She clung there and caught her breath. She could see none of Haraad’s topmen stationed there. No one liked crow’s nest guard duty, and with most of his men needed to guarantee none of his prisoners’ friends staged a revolt, Haraad had probably needed to relax the most unpopular duties.

  Azriyqam climbed down the mast to the bottom of the moonraker’s vast sheet. She spread the lamp oil as widely as she could along the sail’s foot.

  “Calidain.” The Command came effortlessly, and the oil caught, then the sail. Azriyqam hurriedly climbed back up the mast and launched herself into the night. Behind her, the flames bloomed, turning the foremainmast into a banner of fire streaming in the wind.

  Below her, she could already hear shouts as she strained for the height of the mainmast. There, atop it, she could see the iron of the Cage. She landed as quickly as she could, shuddering as she ducked beneath it, and shinnied down the mast to another sail.

  She heard Haraad’s men climbing up the foremainmast, likely laden with water and axes to fight the fire.

  She fumbled at her second jar of oil and began spreading it. It was harder to spread evenly, this time. “Calidain!” she cried, and the oil-spattered cloth took fire with a sputter of sickly fire. A gust of wind made it gutter.

  A hoarse shout from forward told her that she had been spotted. The sound of running feet and creaking wood sounded below her.

  The bridges.

  Haraad’s men ran aft across the rope bridges that connected the sails, one sheet beneath the moonrakers, between the skysails and the topgallants. Bridges like the one she and Elazar had fought so hard to cut from the center foremainmast to the foremast were still perfectly intact here. Why on the Ocean hadn’t she thought of the bridges?

  For just an instant, she froze. She would never cut the thick ropes that bound the bridges. Not alone with only her thin airswords. They weren’t designed for such work, and she had no time to fight. They would be here any second.

  Azriyqam climbed. Her fingers took the strain as she climbed up the mast lit fitfully by the barely alight moonraker.

  She heard shouts behind and below.

  “Beat it out!”

  “What’s that?”

  “Come back here, you!”

  She rose above the top spar of the moonraker. Her head was beneath the Cage as she struck out into the air. She dove for speed, banked to port, and then starboard, finding the thermals of the kitchens below again, riding them up and up.

  “It’s Responsibility! She’s in the air!”

  They were the last words she could make out. The whole Century Ship was waking, pouring up from the decks. The fire bells sounded and people shouted for her to be hunted down.

  Behind her, she saw the flames she had set in the mainmast going out, beaten away by the men in the tops. Only the foremainmast blazed away, lighting up the darkness like a torch. Only one mast.

  There was little else she could do. Wherever she went, she would be followed along the lattices of the mast bridges. She looked to the next mast, the foremizzen, dark and untouched, and saw the familiar lump anchored at the top of it.

  It was still there. In a timeless moment, she glided nearer toward the only home she had ever known for her entire childhood. She knew it better than any place on the Ocean.

  Azriyqam folded her wings and dived. She had never flown to this place, only away and down. Now, she lit on its dry, rattan roof. No one had ever bothered to repair it and why should they? It would have been extra work for no good purpose.

  She dropped into the darkness.

  It took time for her eyes to adjust. She saw nothing, but then no one could see her. They’ll be looking, but would they guess I’d come here? There was nothing here except what she had
left: the rough sack mattress stuffed with dried reeds; it smelled of dry mold and still air. A tiny iron stove for heat on cold nights. The small windows had left little airflow in the cell. She took a step toward it and tripped over something. It was the sewing she had so hated, also dry and shredding from neglect.

  Azriyqam dumped the oil over the dry straw mattress. She hesitated an instant, and then dumped her last jar over the sewing and hung it from the twigs in the ceiling. She would never get a chance to get to the mizzen, beside they would see her there. Her heart pounded and her knees knocked.

  “Calidain!” she cried out.

  Fire kindled in the rushes of the bed, and her cell was lit as it never had been in all the years she had occupied it. The flames licked toward the ceiling. For an instant, she was transfixed. This was her vision. Her vision of the burning cell aboard the Ekkaia, but she was not its instrument. She was its agent, and it gave her a thrill of triumph.

  The knocking in her knees became a pounding in the soles of her feet. She looked at the hatch in the floor that had once locked her in. It rattled once and flew open. One of Haraad’s men.

  “She’s in here!” he yelled down.

  Azriyqam seized her oil-soaked sewing from the ceiling and flung it through the flames. It caught and she draped the flaming cloth over his head as he pulled himself upward.

  His cries turned from rage to fear and pain. Batting at the burning cloth, he lost his grip and fell backward through the hole. Curses and screams floated through the hatch.

  The flames were spreading, and it was past time she was gone.

  Another figure heaved himself through the hatch. He moved faster than she’d have believed. His heavy face sprouted a ragged beard above his tightly-wound scarf. Haraad. He crouched, too tall for her small chamber.

  Azriyqam leapt for the rent in the ceiling, but she wasn’t fast enough to completely avoid the stabbing pain in her left leg as he slashed at her with the dirk. She staggered away from the rent in the roof, crab-crawling backward. Flailing her wings, she got to her feet just as his head came through the roof.