Break the Chains

Chapter Nineteen

Stuffed into Pelkaia’s stolen commodore coat, Jeffin looked like a young lad playing dress-up in his daddy’s wardrobe. Detan fussed with the lay of the boy’s lapels to see if he could coax the shape of the coat into giving him some dignity.

“No use,” Tibs said.

“What’s the matter?” Jeffin asked, turning himself this way and that before a long mirror they’d found tacked up in one of the larger cabins.

“You don’t exactly strike a commodorial figure, my dear lad.” Detan tried to muster a grin. Catching himself in the mirror, he realized it was more of a grimace.

“More commode-ial,” Tibs added.

“Not. Helping.”

Detan eyed the girl, Essi, sitting on the costume trunk from which they’d pulled the commodore’s coat. Her surly face, her rigid shoulders, her ruthless nature. She’d make the perfect commodore, if only she were a decade older. Essi caught him staring and sniffed, flipping hair from her eyes.

“Won’t work,” she said.

“I know.” He sighed and dragged his fingers through his hair, giving it a good shake. No better ideas came to him. “Anyone you’d recommend?”

“Sure,” she said.

“No,” Jeffin snapped, perking Detan’s interest with his obvious hatred.

“Who?” Detan spun, abandoning Jeffin to address Essi.

“Laella, of course. Not a drop of Catari in her. She may be a deviant, but she’s purebred Valathean, and she knows it.”

“Rude?” Detan asked. “Impervious to criticism?”

“That’s her,” Essi agreed.

“Annoying as the day is long,” Jeffin grumbled.

“Perfect. Bring her here.”

“If you want.” Essi dropped down off the trunk and stretched long and hard before making for the cabin’s slim door. “Stay here,” she said, “I’ll be right back.”

Detan paced the small cabin while they waited, ignoring the admonishing glares of both Tibs and Jeffin. Neither of them could contribute what he needed now, for what he needed was a picture-perfect authority figure, capable of withstanding even the tightest of scrutiny from the watchers. Detan would play the role himself – he’d been raised to it – but the watchers had already seen him in the role of Step, average Fleetie, and the sudden promotion would give them pause. And might give him a noose to contend with.

“I don’t see what’s wrong with my appearance,” Jeffin protested.

Detan sighed. “A certain strength of chin is lacking, amongst–”

The door banged open. Essi lead a stiff-backed Valathean girl into the cabin. If she’d been a Scorched girl, he’d guess her to be to be somewhere in her early twenties, but the Valathean blood ran so boldly through her veins that Detan guessed her older – late twenties, at least, possibly early-to-mid thirties. Her skin was dark as obsidian, her eyes wide set and amber of hue, her posture firm an elegant. She wore the long, flowing robes imperials favored, accentuating her slight frame, her black hair in tight braids bound against her head.

Upon sighting Detan, she quirked perfectly arched brows and smiled, cautiously. “Lord Honding?”

“I am Detan.”

“May the blue skies bless our meeting, my lord.” She laced her fingers together and held them up to the sky as she bowed over them, the most formal of Valathean greetings. Detan returned the gesture on instinct. His form may be lacking after years without practice, but his aunt had spent a great many years drilling such courtesies into him.

“Skies keep you, lady, but there is no need for such formality with me. I’m just Detan.”

“But a Honding in truth?”

“I am that,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck where his family brand puckered his flesh. “But I prefer Detan, if you wouldn’t mind.”

Her full lips pursed, but she nodded her assent. “If you wish. Now, you have asked for me?”

Detan eyed the girl from head to toe. She was willowy, as was the common body type of Valathean women, tall and narrow of every limb. Her slim face regarded him with care, brows pushed together in mild consternation, every line of her body radiating controlled calm. He shared a look with Tibs, who gave him a nod of agreement.

“And what is your odd little talent?” he asked.

Laella’s gaze flitted to lock with Jeffin’s. Something venomous passed between them in that moment. Jeffin’s brows pulled so far down in annoyance that Detan half expected his face to scrunch up so that his eyebrows became his moustache. It was only a heartbeat’s time, but the exchange gave him pause. Things were not so sunny aboard Pelkaia’s ship after all.

“I am a mirror-worker, like Jeffin.”

“I see.” Detan sensed he was treading dangerous waters, but he had scant time for diplomacy. If they were going to fiddle about wasting marks getting Pelkaia and her first mate out of the clink, then it needed to be quick. The longer he waited, the closer monsoon season crept.

“And would you be able to accompany us on an excursion?”

“You’re not allowed to leave the ship,” Jeffin said. “Captain’s orders.”

“Captain ain’t here, lad,” Tibs said in his slow, easy drawl. “And this lady might be able to help us get her back.”

Jeffin’s lip curled in a subconscious sneer as Tibs said the word “lady.” Detan grimaced, knowing what was coming next. Before he could interject, the lad thrust a finger at Laella. “She cannot be trusted.”

Detan sighed. Well, there might be something to the boy’s anger. Might as well dig up the root of it. “Why are you ordered to stay on the ship, Laella?”

“I am the captain’s latest rescue, before yourself, of course. She likes to keep us all aboard until we have proven to her the extent of our abilities, and the quality of our control.”

“And how is the quality of your control?”

Essi said, “She bested Jeffin when the captain put them through their paces.”

“That true?”

A tiny, modest smile flitted across Laella’s lips. “Some think I was given easier tasks. But yes, it is true.”

“You were given easier tasks!” Jeffin took a step toward Laella. The woman’s only response was to lift her chin. “And I say your joining us was far, far too convenient. If you’re not an imperial spy, then I’m a bumbling idiot.”

“You’re a bumbling idiot,” Detan said. Laella had the grace to cover her laugh with her fingertips.

Jeffin whirled on him, still shaking that finger, cheeks near as red as his hair. Detan stared in detached wonderment. Was this what Pelkaia allowed to run amok on her ship? Rivalries? Classism? If he’d known ahead of time what divisive lines had been drawn between her crew, he might have tried another angle.

Now, though… now he was tired of it all. And frustrated, and anxious to get their plans swung into full motion. But before he could move on, he’d have to try and mend what Pelkaia had let fester.

“I don’t understand,” Jeffin’s voice was scarcely controlled, his lips flecked with spittle. “How you can trust that… that… that Valathean. She’s not Scorched! Not like us!”

For just a breath, Detan went very, very still. Of all the petty bullshit he’d encountered over the years, this self-imposed division of allegiance speared deepest. Who in the fiery pits was Jeffin – wretched, weak-willed Jeffin – to denigrate this woman for her blood? She was deviant. End of fucking story.

For the first time in a long, long while, a cold stone of rage metamorphosed in his heart, in his belly. More than just the little ticks of annoyance and impatience he’d been so easily shunting aside. The icy fingers of it extend out from his core, threaded through him, steeled him for what was to come.

Voice like gravel, he said, “She’s not like us?”

“No!” Jeffin barked, too tied up in his own anger to sense Detan’s burgeoning rage. “She’s a pits-cursed monster!”

Detan heard, as if from a great distance, Tibs take a sharp breath. And then his focus narrowed, encompassing only the inflamed face of the man before him, the tipping point of all his frustrations.

“Am I a monster?” he asked, voice smooth as silk, though it sounded far away to him. Dreamy.

Jeffin’s hand dropped, his pale brows pushed together in confusion. “No, that’s… You’re Scorched! Like the rest of us.”

He stepped forward. Jeffin stepped back. A woman’s voice murmured, but all Detan could hear was Tibs say hush.

“Scorched, am I?” He held up his hands between them, turning them over so Jeffin could get a good, long look at his heritage-darkened skin, his Valathean-long fingers. “Who the fuck do you think I am? I am, by blood, an honest-to-skies lord of your hated empire. That make me a monster?”

“No! I said you were–”

Detan surged forward, grabbed Jeffin by the lapels of his false commodore’s coat and rammed his back against the cabin’s wall so hard the mirror jumped. A woman screamed, someone clapped with glee, and somewhere in the distance he heard Tibs yell sirra! but he didn’t care. He was going to squeeze some pits-cursed sense out of this grubby lout Pelkaia had scavenged up.

Jeffin squawked, a wheeze of air squeezed from his throat. Detan lifted him, lifted him so that his stupid little brown boots could no longer touch the floor. With his forearm bracing Jeffin against the wall, he slammed his free fist into the wall beside the lad’s head. Grinned as he squealed with fright. Grinned at the satisfying crack of the wood.

“Listen to me, you dripping shit. Purebred Valatheans ain’t the only monsters roaming this sun-slapped continent, understand? Weren’t Valatheans who turned me over to the whitecoats, weren’t just Valatheans who jeered at Aransa’s walls while deviants were forced to walk the killing heat of the Black Wash. The empire sets the rules, but it ain’t imperial blood that enforces them, it’s superstition and hate and fear. We deviant sensitives got enough people to call us monsters without doing it to ourselves.”

“I never meant–”

Detan squeezed.

“I know what you meant. You meant she was different. Meant she hadn’t grown up chasing sandrats for supper, or crushing palm leaves for a drink.”

His vision narrowed, seeing only Jeffin’s red face, growing redder from fear and lack of air. Saw the sweat on his brow, the frantic twitching of his gaze as he searched for someone to save him. Jeffin wasn’t sorry about what he’d said. Was only sorry it’d bit him in the ass. Even if he did apologize to Laella, he’d never mean it. Not really.

A tremble began beneath Detan’s skin, a tingle like the wind before the crack of lightning. He went rigid. White stars crept to the edges of his vision as his barriers broke, as his sense of the world expanded – came to encompass the great swathes of sel wreathing the ship, hiding it. Keeping all aboard it safe.

There was so much. And it would be so easy.

If Jeffin wouldn’t atone, then…

“I’ll show you a monster.”

A woman gasped. “We’re losing the mirrors! The sel’s just… It’s disappearing!”

Running outside the cabin. Shouts. It didn’t matter. Punishing Jeffin – that mattered.

“Detan, no!” Tibs yelled.

Not sirra, not Honding. Tibs had called him Detan. Had sounded afraid when he said it.

With a pained growl Detan tore away from Jeffin, let him fall to the hard ground without a care. He pivoted, yanked the cabin door open and bolted out onto the deck, elbowing aside startled deviants who came running at the shouts.

He ran until his chest hit the Larkspur’s rail and gripped it so hard the wood groaned, his bones creaked. He gasped cold night air, sucked it down to drive back the heat of his anger, trying to submerge the rage.

No use.

Whirlwinds of sel thrashed around him, sparkling and flashing, ribbons like lashes speeding faster and faster, attracted by his anger. Craving his destruction.

Shouts echoed to him – Tibs keeping the startled crew back – but the words were little more than a low fizz below the roar of the winds the sel-storm kicked up. He could not hold.

Could not take them all out with him.

Roaring defiance, he threw his hands toward the sky and called upon every ounce of skill he’d used as a selium miner, utilizing the motion of his body combined with his will, to direct where he wanted to the sel to flow. It carved up, damned near leapt with joy, spiraling into the cloud-strewn sky.

He could not wait any longer, could only pray he’d pushed what he’d gathered far enough away. Anger poured through him, boiled through his veins, arced along his extended sel-sense until it reached the whipping strands of selium and then rended them, tore the effervescent gas apart molecule by molecule.

The sky burst with flame. Clouds ignited in shades of blood and gold. Heat washed over him, kissed the top sail. Someone screamed fire and he heard the scramble of the crew as they went for the water buckets, the smothering tarps. He didn’t look. Couldn’t turn away until it’d all burned out and the sky returned to the dark-ash of the night.

He’d contained it, somehow. Kept it away from the buoyancy sacks in the belly of the ship. Kept maybe half the mirror-ring safe. That’d have to be enough.

When his rage had burned through he turned, arms shaky, forehead crested with sweat. The crew stared at him, the only movement a lazy tendril of smoke winding up from the top mast where a fire had gotten started and been promptly squashed. Eyes he did not know, wide with fear and awe and, just maybe, something like respect, pinned him down. Demanded answers.

He never had any.

“Laella.” He pointed to the woman, her face slack with shock. He had no time to assuage her worries. They needed to get out of here before watchers showed up to investigate his conflagration. “Get that coat off Jeffin and practice your best commodore impersonation. The rest of you, get this ship looking like something a Fleetie would be proud of. We’re going to go break your captain out, and then we’re going to rescue my friends. Understand?”

Nervous nods all around.

“Go!” he yelled, and they scattered like dropped grains.

Tibs slipped up beside him, pressed a water cup into his hand. “Not the method I would have chosen.”

Detan’s laughter was frantic, shuddering. He only stayed on his feet because Tibs held the back of his upper arm, propping him up so that no one could see how badly he needed the support. So much for not being a monster.