Once Stolen

by D. N. Bryn

  I don’t need to interpret her expression to see the lie for what it is. I know her. I’m fine being alone, at least for a little while, but she’s not. I don’t think she ever has been. My soul alights with the desire to never let her feel so again, before that yearning crashes into the knowledge that she doesn’t want to be with me anymore.

  Sliding past the workbench, I run my fingers over the ignit flowers in the balcony railing. For once, the soothing pulse does nothing for me, nothing but turn my stomach upside down. I let go, glancing at the cave beyond.

  The only light in the oddly ignit-free cavern streams through the tumbling waterfall over the entrance. The incoming tide rocks a floating dock, its short ladder leading up to a tunnel beneath the balcony. A small steam-powered ship with three decks of deep-brown wood sits beside the dock, aimed toward the rocks Thais’s mom died on. Two steam stacks of blue metal run along either side of the ship. The faintest tingle brushes my head ridges: the brush of waves against something that bobs beyond the ship, likely a medium-sized vessel like Rubem’s.

  I wave for Thais’s attention as she moves toward the cases beside her mom’s bed—the only ones we haven’t checked yet. “Hey, ignit eyes, does the boat behind your mother’s ship still work? Is it small enough for us to take out of here?”

  Thais’s brow tightens. “I sold our smaller boat as soon as I arrived in the first port.”

  I glance back into the cavern. The tip of the vessel drifts just far enough into view for me to make out the scarlet fang at the front. Oh, muck.

  Footsteps from the stairs vibrate along my head ridges. I spin back toward Thais. Rubem stands in the doorway, the bead curtain drawn to one side. It falls back into place behind him.

  His scent name hits me like the first time we met, leather and sun and wine in equal proportions. I clutch my necklace, fingers wrapped tight around the dull clinging ancient. Thais leans against the bed, her brow drawn tight.

  “You’re alive—” I start.

  He cuts me off. “You’d better take what you need and be quick about it if you want to leave here alive.”

  Something about his graceful hand motions seems off—wrong. Rubem’s boat drifts forward a bit farther, revealing the deck, where a light-skinned human with a blaze of orange hair sits. Wolf, alive, his head leaning against the back of his seat and a pistol in his lap. He doesn’t need to lift it to shoot a bolt of fear straight through me.

  As Rubem moves farther into the room on his Murkling light feet, my horror knots itself into my gut. Rubem did not make the footsteps I felt coming up the stairs.

  Those were the fishers.

  EIGHTEEN

  The Cost of Everything

  The most important price

  isn’t the one we put on our pasts,

  but the one we pay for a better future.

  “YOU’RE HERE WITH LILY?” The motions hurt to sign.

  Rubem’s lips curl, his fear slipping into his scent in pungent waves. “You know it wasn’t my first choice.” But the first wobbles so much that it barely exists. The empty air in Rubem’s gun holster and the caiman-high smear of blood on his boots speak stronger than his words. This wasn’t his first choice. It wasn’t his choice at all.

  Behind him, Lily pushes through the beads, her pistol aimed at the center of his back. The green ignit-finding compass sits in her other hand, a Sheila-sized tooth gash in its side. The crocodilian must be even smarter than I thought.

  Two more humans follow Lily, one I recognize as Rubem’s bearded second-in-command and another with a half-folded fisher’s net tucked into their belt. The fisher crunches the compass beneath their boot, and they both turn their guns on me.

  I squeeze my ancient-covered ignit. If I attack in such a small space, I’ll end up with a bullet in my chest. The cavern behind me sings of freedom, but I can’t just leave Thais and my ignits with these silt-breathers. Both of Lily’s lackeys cock their pistols.

  They give Thais a single glance and fix their guns for me instead. The fisher says something to Rubem’s old lackey, and I can figure what they must have said by the way their aims lift from my chest to my head: the pelt will sell better intact.

  “Hey now,” Rubem’s lips move in time with his hands, each motion soothing and smooth, the vibrations from his throat like a gentle tingle along my head ridges. “We had a deal, Lily. You said you and yours would leave the Murk be, and this boiuna is of the Murk.”

  The pinches and pulls in every expression around the room overwhelm my comprehension, but I know the thoughts be-hind them: Lily and her lackeys hold the power here, deal or no deal. Three guns against six open palms. Whatever honorable intentions Rubem had, the fishers aren’t bound to anything right now but the steadiness of their aims.

  They don’t lower their guns.

  An awkward vibration rises in Rubem’s chest. “With all these ignits, you will have weapons and wealth beyond every cartel combined. What is one more boiuna pelt? You claimed to have better people to kill. Villains, you said.”

  Whatever Lily’s reasons, I don’t care. I can’t think past the first series of words, a taunt that repeats behind my eyes. All these ignits. My irritation bubbles. “Muck no, these aren’t your ignits.” I sign so fast that I catch the attention of everyone in the room. “You’re not getting a single one of them, not any of you silt-breathers.”

  Lily’s lips draw into a hard line, and her light skin turns bright red.

  At the same time, the last flecks of color drain from Thais’s face. She slips onto the bed, her plea tiny. “Cacao.”

  Don’t fucking pull that. I came all this way for the ignits, and I won’t let the fishers leave with them. The words leap through my mind, but they cling to my fingers as I watch Thais, her greyed skin glistening and her hollow eyes digging into me. I can’t look away from those eyes, not when my lungs catch and pull and not when my heart shatters. What the fuck am I doing, destroying whatever small mercies Rubem’s plea might have bought us? If we all die because of my stubborn selfishness . . .

  Thais is more important than some glowing rocks. Even Rubem is more important. And so am I. Not as a greedy banished thief, but as me. A hurricane. A cacao bean.

  “You know, whatever, have the ignits. It’s fine.”

  But Lily’s stare bores straight through my hands to my wire necklace. The ancient seems almost to tremble beneath her gaze, and it shrinks back, a blister of colored light twisting over it.

  “Give me that.” Lily’s signs turn messy, and she steps toward me, her gun wobbling.

  I clutch the ancient. The soft fungal-like creature melds to my fingers as though grabbing me in return. “Why?” I ask with my free hand.

  A smile tugs over her lips, teeth revealed as if ready to snap. “You must have seen hints of its power, even if your people are too foolish to probe further. It does make ignits, after all.”

  I run my thumb over the ancient, soothing the fear and confusion that strangle my chest. “What I know is that it’s a living thing, not a possession to be stolen or traded.”

  Lily steps toward me once more, her flaming hair a rage.

  I glance at Thais. She sinks deeper into the pillows, now closer to where Rubem’s traitorous bearded crewmate stands beside the final ignit case. I swallow and turn my gaze back down the barrel of Lily’s gun. “But, um, what would you give in return for it?”

  I know I can’t hand the ancient over, even if she offers me the world. After all I did to the Murk—the deaths and destruction I caused—I can’t betray my home again. The damn murderous hateful fishers don’t deserve any part of the beauty or the power that the Murk offers. This ancient belongs, not to me or to them or to Rubem, but to the Murk. To my home.

  “Give it to me, and you and your little friend can go run back to your disgusting swamp.” Lily’s nose wrinkles. “If she lives that long.”

  Thais lies limply across the edge of the bed. Her chest surges up before going still for far too long, heaving again only when I
think the ache in my heart might kill me. She reaches with slow creeping fingers for the last glass case in the room, her steady hands a stark contrast to her breath. Relief sinks through me, but my gaze catches on a little box on the inside corner of the case. A little box like the one on the workbench, equipped with an eruptstone and an active ignit. A booby trap.

  A series of impulses slam into my fear and spark along my muscles, taking control. I leap at Thais as she yanks the case open, but I reach her too late. The lid clanks against the back wall, and a tiny ominous vibration stirs in the little box. The tremor of it rattles along my head ridges, so terrible that I barely feel the fishers’ pistols firing. Pain burns across my tail. I can just make out the soft glow of the poison ignits in the open case as I grab Thais, pulling her into my arms.

  Then the little booby-trapped box explodes. A sphere of light forms out of it, expanding in all directions. Thais reaches for the poison ignits, but the light moves far faster than her weak desperate arms can manage. It hits the poison ignits, and those, too, detonate. They transform into their own larger explosion spheres, green power crackling through them like bolts of toxic lightning.

  Putting all my strength into my tail, I thrust us backward, toward the balcony. Rubem’s bearded crewmate is not so lucky. The light consumes them, engulfing them like a thick oozing swamp mud surrounding its prey. Their scream survives longer than they do, tickling my head ridges as Thais and I fly through the air. The light sphere caresses the ceiling, and the ignit swirls that glide through its center burst in a series of small explosions, tearing a rift from one end of the room to the other.

  Thais and I hit the ground rolling. I wrap myself around her, cradling her fragile body to my chest. As the explosions fade, the light vanishes. It leaves nothing behind but empty air where stone and glass and flesh once were. Cracks shoot through the remaining sections of the rock ceiling. Chunks of it crash down, taking out the balcony’s banister and pieces of the floor. Rubem and Lily slip over the edge where the railing had been. The fisher with the net tumbles after them, but they grab my tail to keep from falling into the cavern. Their fingers dig into the deep graze the bullet left. Fresh pain spears up my tail.

  Letting go of Thais, I launch at the nuisance lackey. I knock them off me with a fist across their jaw and catch myself on the lip of the balcony as they drop into the cavern. They hit the deck with a thud and careen to a stop beside Rubem and Lily.

  An onslaught of ceiling rocks assaults me. I hold tight, but a stone hits my head ridges. The world turns to a mess of vibrations and darkness. I fall. Away from Thais.

  The smooth side of the balcony defies my grasp, but I search for a handhold anyway, anything to keep me from falling from Thais and the ignits and into the fishers’ grasp. Thais catches one of my wrists. I jerk to a dangling stop, my arm in half shock and half agony. Below me, I feel Rubem sit up, the fishers already scrambling for their pistols.

  Thais braces herself against the small stone offshoots left in the balcony railing, rock from the ceiling still falling behind her. Her whole body trembles. She can hold me up, but not for long.

  My mind feeds me the future: Thais losing her hold on the balcony, falling after me, her weak body shattering on the layer of fallen stones that now coat the deck. Not moving. Every hurt feels insignificant compared to that image.

  Thais’s eyes nearly roll back, and her brow scrunches. Her necklace presses against the fabric of her shirt. She needs a poison ignit. But the only large enough green stones we found were in that case, and they’re gone, turned to energy and rubble. Everything we sought after, destroyed in an instant.

  Almost everything.

  My hand jerks to the little eruptstone bead in my necklace.

  A voice in my head tries to talk me out of it. Maybe if I detonate an ignit into the cavern, it will kill the fishers, and maybe Thais and I can squish enough small poison ignits into her necklace to make it work. Maybe I can have everything: her and the ignits and my life. Maybe.

  Or maybe I can give up everything to assure Thais’s life goes on, and to give her what she wants. What she deserves.

  A cry vibrates from her throat as she pulls me closer. The knobby bone of my elbow catches on the edge of the balcony. Pushing through the pain, I swing up, reaching for her. I shove the eruptstone between her grasping fingers.

  She stares at me. Her hands cling, motionless, to my wrist, the little rock pressing between my scales and her skin, but for once I can read her perfectly, her whole being asking a single question.

  I answer. “We can’t let Lily and the fishers or anyone else take these ignits. No matter who they are, what they want from them—one person with this much of anything only brings pain.” My one-armed motions quake, small and concealed. “I’ll get Rubem out and leave the fishers here, in the cavern. You run to the front entrance. Take the rowboat and toss the eruptstone behind you. Let this place be those motherfuckers’ poison.” I force a grin. “Just save me an ignit before you blow the place, won’t you? I might need to replace mine.”

  Tears brim in Thais’s eyes, and she tightens her fingers around the eruptstone. She lets go of my wrist. Her final signs to me hang in the air like a promise. “Go, be my fucking hero.”

  I launch away from the balcony and twist into a ball, hitting the wooden dock beyond the mess of fallen stone. My ridges tingle with the scuffle of Thais’s bare feet hobbling out the door of her mom’s decimated room. The moment I right myself, I vault at the fisher with the net.

  Lily fires a shot that zings past my shoulder, making my head pound like a war drum, but the other fisher only fumbles with their gun. I twist my tail around their neck and grab at their belt for the emerald-studded pistol they took from Rubem. My hand brushes their net. I bite down a shudder, snatch the firearm, and toss it to Rubem.

  As the human in my coils slumps to the ground, Rubem cocks his pistol. He levels it on Lily’s chest in the same instant she turns her gun on him. They stare down each other’s barrels.

  Rubbing my ancient-covered ignit, I unfurl from the dead human. The movement makes Lily glance at me. She swallows, but her aim stays firm.

  How quickly could I cut off the blood supply to her head? Every instinct urges me to try, to take advantage of the distraction Rubem’s making and rid the world of her a little sooner. But the way she watches Rubem stops me, her gaze so level with the center of his head that I’m certain she would kill him first.

  She’ll die when Thais detonates the island anyway. And Rubem and I need to get out of here before that happens.

  I glance at the tip of his boat, its scarlet fang symbol poking out from behind the old steamship. “Leave her. Let’s go.”

  Rubem nods once. He moves down the dock with me, each step so fluid he seems to drift like fog, his pistol ever tracking the fisher. She continues aiming at us in return, as still as a penajuar preparing to pounce.

  Footsteps ping oddly along my ridges. Fighting through the pounding in my skull and the constant buzz of the waterfall, I focus on searching for their location, but my head aches too fiercely, and the feet seem to arise from every direction at once.

  As we round the side of the steamship, Rubem’s boat comes into view—Rubem’s boat with no Wolf sitting half-conscious on the deck. The trudging finally solidifies in my mind just before its source stumbles out of the cavern’s entry tunnel. Wolf steps from it onto the dock, a pistol in one hand and a leather sack brimming with small blue, purple, and green ignits in the other. He appears little healthier than Thais, sweat matting his orange hair and his cheeks so white that the dots on his face look like holes. The skin around his bandages is swollen and red. It stinks of infection.

  But he holds his gun steady as he points it at us. Two guns against Rubem’s one.

  “Run?” Rubem asks.

  I roll my eyes. “Silt-breather.”

  Somehow, my body finds a new rush of fire. I scoop him up and vault us onto his boat, bullets whizzing by. We tumble into the stairs.
While I untangle myself, Rubem charges to the top deck, flipping switches in the console by the steering wheel. The thunder ignit beneath us roars. It bursts us backward just as Lily and Wolf round the steamship. Rubem ducks, and the northerner’s bullets take out chips in the wheel, narrowly missing the top of Rubem’s many braids.

  The waterfall pours over us, salt and foam filling my senses. Then we’re out. We’re free. But Thais isn’t, and she’s the only thing I care about right now.

  “Drive around the island!” I sign to Rubem. “We have to pick up Thais there.”

  The brute force of my determination flutters out of me as my eyes adjust to the midday light. Gently cresting waves sputter white foam. The sun gleams off Sheila’s bulky scales as she comes up beside the boat, and along the coast on the far side of the peninsula, the one that points its mangrove-laden rocks toward the island, the same brilliant rays flash off the pistols and nets of a host of fisher vessels. Much nearer, too secluded by the rocky crescent of trees to notice the approaching horde of humans, the light hits the scales and feathers and weapons of dozens of Murkling warriors swimming to the island, Brine leading the way.

  NINETEEN

  Fucking Heroes

  If the good die young,

  maybe it’s because we never bothered to save them.

  SUCH A CHILL RUNS through my blood that it turns the air cold.

  Rubem drives us around the side of the island, his mess of little braids swirling in the wind as the ignit-powered boat whips along the waves. I wait for the Murklings to notice the approaching fishers, somehow, some way. But their course remains an arrow’s path to the island. At this rate, the fisher boats will slip in behind them, cutting them off from the Murk in a surprise attack.

  I shouldn’t care. The Murk never bothered to understand me. They banished me and sentenced me to death. They don’t deserve my help just as much as I don’t deserve theirs. I can bring Rubem’s poison ignit to Thais, and together we can make a break for it, shoot along the coast, and let the Murklings and the fishers fight among themselves in the wake of a decimated ignit hoard.