Break the Chains

Chapter Two

Knives came out all around him, looking rather pointy, and Detan took an involuntary step backward. The sturdy man with the too-clean hair holding him by the ropes stopped Detan’s retreat and leaned down to whisper, “Got a weapon?”

Detan blinked. “Gosh, me? I’m really more a master of the art of running away.”

Pelkaia’s man scowled at him, and he beamed right back, biting the insides of his cheeks in frustration. This was taking longer than he’d hoped.

The man cut his ropes and the blood rushed back, tingling his fingertips. Detan sighed with relief and rubbed the life back into his hands. It would’ve been embarrassing to lose a finger due to lack of circulation.

He clapped. A big, echoing crack that slammed the ears, courtesy of the mighty strange acoustics caused by Cracked Thorn’s placement. All eyes turned to him, bright as the metal in their hands. For a heartbeat, he hesitated. What could he say to these wound-up vultures to keep them from plucking each other’s eyes out?

Pelkaia’s man pushed the grip of a knife into his palm. Poor bastard probably thought Detan knew how to use it. He hoped it wasn’t the only one the man’d brought. Detan tested its weight, as he’d seen many knife-carriers do, and found it lighter than it should have been. Hesitantly, he extended his sel-sense. The thing had sel in its handle, making it as light as it was sharp. Detan frowned at it, something like an idea coming to him. A bad idea, more than likely, but he’d never been picky with a plan when the alternative was being stabbed. Clearing his throat, he reseated an affable grin.

“Commodore! There is no need for arguments, these men have proven well how ardent they are in carrying out the good laws of Valathea. Why, they were so damnably thorough I didn’t even have a moment to explain that they had passed the test before we all ended up out here.”

Pelkaia’s eyes narrowed beneath the mask of her borrowed face, and he forced himself to stride forward without care, surreptitiously unscrewing the ball at end of the dagger’s grip. A few tiny sel beads leaked out, struggling to rise. He centered himself, pushing aside any hint of fear or anger, as he held the sel in his mind.

This was his element, he was good at this. He would not lose control. Not again.

“A test?” The watch-captain grunted in disgust. “My man saw you work the deviant power with his own bald eyes. You sayin’ that was staged somehow? Mercer Trag’s pin catching fire like that?”

Detan chuckled as he sauntered forward, walking the border between the two sets of blades. Their points followed him as he passed. He itched to sprint away, to throw himself over the edge and trust to luck, but he forced himself to stand tall. To slip a pinch of sel between thumb and forefinger.

“Deviant power, me? What nonsense! Though I am flattered to hear you found the display convincing, it was just a harmless parlor trick. See? Smoke powder.”

He stood in the center of the gulf between the two forces and faced the watchers, his body a wall between his hands and Pelkaia’s crew. He held up a hand and snapped his fingers, feeding a sliver of anger into the sel. A bright, hot spark ignited. Detan cut off his connection to the spark, but it snaked out in all directions anyway. It lashed the air with the frantic motions of a beheaded snake, growing bright enough to send the watchers squealing and scampering.

He grimaced. Lost control. Again.

“Oops. Time to go!” He sang as he spun on his heel and grabbed the sleeve of the nearest scrubber-of-the-deck. The grubby man shook off his grip, but he followed Detan all the same. Indignant the man may be, but he had his survival instincts intact. Pelkaia gave the command to retreat and they fled as one, leaping the thick rail of the Larkspur’s deck.

With his sore, bare feet safely aboard the Larkspur’s silk-smooth deck he spun around and crowded the fore rail, hooting as the watchers recovered and dashed after them. Pelkaia vaulted the rail and stood beside him, her alien face grim. When all souls were back on board, he felt her extend her sel-sense. The massive presence of selium tucked away in the hull jerked to the side. The ship scuttled sideways, dancing out of the pursuing watchers’ reach.

Detan cursed and hugged the rail to keep from falling. Out on the spire the watchers rallied – damnably efficient folk – and scampered towards their own flier, the craft that’d brought them up to the jetty so that Detan could kiss the sands from the skies.

Not a quick ship, not compared to the sleek beauty of the Larkspur, but quick enough to get them into arrow-firing range. Detan had long ago learned never to trust his luck, nor his skin, to poor aim. Pressed against the rail, he shifted his weight back and forth in a shuffling little dance, waiting for the crew to do something. Anything.

They didn’t.

“Begging your pardon, Pelly old girl, but some sel wouldn’t go amiss right about now.”

Pelkaia raised her hand, and for one mad moment he thought she would slap him. He cringed back, and she rolled her eyes. She ripped her false face off and flung it toward the watchers. Detan scrambled to extend his much clumsier sel-sense and grab the sel, then float it over to the stone arch between the jetty’s edge and the flier’s dock. The watchers were drawing close.

Sweating something fierce, he forced the fistful of incandescent gas against the arch’s keystone and opened himself to it, venting his frustration.

For just a breath, the siren call of the sel surrounding him – more than the gas in the buoyancy sacks below – threatened to overwhelm him. A ring of sel orbited the ship, shifted to a mirror shine, a great swollen hoop ripe and ready for him to explode. A flutter of panic itched up his arm and he cut off his senses, digging his fingers into the rail so hard his nails bent backward.

Stone groaned, men cried out, and the whole thing went to the pits in a puff of dust and the flailing of blue coats running to clear the avalanche. He slumped, giving up his weight to the rail in exhaustion, too terrified to look back and see how large his conflagration had grown.

A cheer went up from the crew behind him, a good rousing tally-ho of the spirit, and he forced himself to plaster a smile back on his sweat-slick face and whirl around to take a bow. He liked to tell himself his knees didn’t wobble and his arms didn’t shake. If they did, the others were too polite to bring it up.

“With me, clown.” Talon-like fingers dug into his shoulder. Pelkaia marched him forward in a neat line, the crew’s eyes stuck to them like wool to a fine-toothed cactus. He smiled at them, and managed a few little waves, but each time he did, Pelkaia dug her nails in deeper. By the time they made it to the confines of her cabin – a space that was once his cabin – he thought his shoulder would be crushed to bits.

Though the unstable nature of ships didn’t allow for a lot of decorative leeway, Pelkaia’d done her room up in full Catari style all the same. Indigo prayer mats embroidered with crisp white stars hung from the walls, strings of beads carved from all the rock types the Scorched had to offer looped her bed rail. It seemed Pelly didn’t mind discovery of her bloodline anymore, no matter its outlawed status with Valathea. Detan wasn’t sure if that was good for his schemes or not.

He kept his trap shut, tamping down the urge to make a smart remark about being dragged straight to the bedroom, and tried to look contrite. “I am so glad you got my message!”

Her sun-bleached brows shoved together. “Your message…? Oh, oh gods above and below, the rumors–”

“Tibs is such a little gossiper.” The moment she closed her eyes in annoyance he flit his gaze around the cramped room to see if there was anything he could use to convince her to help him in his schemes. Too soon her eyes snapped back open, and he shrugged, palms out as if in offering.

“And what were you going to do if I hadn’t received your so-called message?”

“Die of shock, more than likely. You’ve created a few choice rumors of your own, you know. Stories of a black ship snaking through the night, picking up any sel-sensitives with the tiniest deviation of ability. You’re damned near a folk legend, Pelly. Say, I wonder if anyone’s written a song about you? Something stompy, with a banjo. Oh! I bet–”

“Shut up.”

He did.

“What do you want, Honding?”

“A long, fulfilling life. Possibly a chilled drink and one of those pastries with cactus pear jelly in the center. Do you have any?”

“Honding!”

He ducked his head to fake being chagrinned and ran one hand through his dusty, greasy hair. He had to get the contrition just right to win her to his cause. Had to measure the subtle shift of his weight to one side, as if uncertain, the soft blush of rising embarrassment, the catch of emotion in his throat. It was a real good thing Tibs had made him practice so many cursed times.

“I need your help, Pelkaia. Ripka and New Chum, they’re in trouble.”

Her eyes narrowed, but she leaned forward, interested. “What’s happened?”

“We were up in Kalisan… Sightseeing.”

“Sure you were.”

“Well, Ripka caught a rumor from some old watcher buddies that Kalisan’s warden was preparing to make a move on some local deviants. He’d planned on wrapping them up with a bow and handing them over to the whitecoats for a favor. Wasn’t any way we could get in touch with these deviants, understand, so we poked around a bit. Found out the old warden was right particular about a certain notebook. Ripka went for it – took New Chum with her – without telling me or Tibs and got caught.

“Rumor is, she managed to hide the book somewhere before she got brought in, but no one knows where. She and New Chum got shipped off to the Remnant prison to sweat out their worries and consider how much smoother things might be if they give the crusty old warden back his intel. We tried to intervene during the transport, but missed the chance, so, you see–”

Pelkaia held up a silencing hand. “You expect me to believe Ripka would make a move like that without assistance?”

“A lot’s changed since you skirted off with my ship,” he snapped, not needing to fake indignity. “And Ripka is her own woman. Just because she’s taken berth on my flier doesn’t mean she tells me every cursed thing.”

“If you recall, you were contracted to steal this ship for me.” She laid a hand against the smooth wood of her cabin wall. “It was never meant for you.”

Detan snorted. “More the fool you were, thinking I’d intended to just hand it over.”

“And yet you did just hand it over.”

“Only because you’d drugged the others! What was I supposed to do? Fight you off with my back crisped like I’d taken a nap on a firepit? Pits below, Pelkaia, you’ve never given us – never given me – any choice in your games. Everyone bends to your demented agenda, or you break them. Sometimes I wonder why I didn’t leave you to rot in that cursed hole of a city. Why I didn’t let Thratia run you through.”

“Everyone always bends to my agenda?” She rose up, shoulders straightening, chin lifting, fury sparking bright in her eyes. Detan took a hesitant step back, trying to get a leash on his temper. Tibs would kick his teeth clean out if he blew this chance over a squabble.

“Pelkaia, look, I don’t want to–”

“I don’t care what you want,” she growled, fists clenched at her sides. “You come onto my ship, ask me for help, and then insult me? Maybe Ripka and New Chum got themselves arrested to relieve themselves of your company.”

“No matter what you think of me, those two deserve–”

“Deserve a better friend than you.”

A heavy tattoo pounded on the door before it was wrenched open. The sturdy man who’d freed his wrists stuck his head in and raised both brows.

“Hate to interrupt the domestics,” he said, “but it appears someone is trying to board us. Rinky little flier. Got Happy Birthday Virra! painted on the side.”

“Tibs!” Ignoring Pelkaia’s scowl, Detan pushed past the first mate and spilled out onto the deck, casting around for the flier’s familiar silhouette. It bobbed in the air off the starboard side, a collection of rather large spring-loaded harpoons pointed at it by the stable hands of the Larkspur’s crew.

“Stand down!” Detan ordered, and received nothing but blank stares and a few light chuckles. Right. Like they’d listen to him. Plastering on a fake smile, Detan sidled up as close as he could to the rail and squinted against the silvery light glinting off nearby clouds.

Tibs stood on the flier’s deck, cutting a rather obvious target, one hand cranking the wheel that powered their rear propeller while the other hand kept his hat stuck to his head. Poor sod must be wearing himself out, fighting a headwind while trying to keep up with the much larger – and faster – Larkspur.

“Stand down,” Pelkaia said, voice raw with irritation but modulated with the tones of easy command. Her crew shrugged and swung their weapons aside, lounging against the harpoon stands as if they did this sort of thing every day. Detan swallowed. Maybe they did. Maybe Pelkaia had grown far more militant than he’d guessed.

“Wave the boarding flag, Coss.”

The first mate scrambled to a canvas sack tacked against the cabin’s exterior wall and pulled out two bright red flags on stubby sticks. He flashed the semaphore for safe-to-board, and Tibs eased the flier toward the Larkspur’s sleek hull.

Pelkaia’s crew hopped to work. Although their expressions were bright with curiosity, they didn’t say a word. Their shoulders were hunched, each move made with mechanical precision. Someone threw a tie-rope across and Tibs anchored it, wiry shoulders slumping with relief now that he didn’t have to keep pace with the speedier ship.

Once secured, Tibs hauled himself up a rope ladder. The first mate and another man helped him to crest the high rail. Tibs dusted his breeches with one hand and tipped his hat brim to Pelkaia.

“Much obliged, captain.”

“A pleasure to see you, Tibal,” she said, then jerked her head to the first mate. “Show these gentlemen to a cabin, Coss. And lock the door.”

“Wait just a sands-cursed moment…” Detan began.

“We’ll drop them in Petrastad.” She turned her back on Detan while she spoke with Coss. “They can find their own way from there.”

With a sheepish grin, Coss grabbed Detan and Tibs by the upper arms and steered them midship. He opened a door to a small sleeping cabin, and shoved them inside.

“Sorry ’bout this,” Coss said, and locked the door anyway.

Tibs caught Detan’s eye and tipped his hat back. “Conversation went well, then?”

Detan grimaced. “Beautifully.”